Badge "In-Country Escort".

[Tal Inbar]

Interesting badge - on sale on ebay:

[Taz]

Tal,
Indeed interesting,
Were these issued to the Inspectors of both nations?
They were allowed to conduct up to 20 short-notice inspections per year at designated sites during the first three years of treaty implementation and to monitor specified missile-production facilities to guarantee that no new missiles were being produced.
Each party could send observers to monitor the other's elimination efforts as they occurred. The protocol explicitly banned interference with photo-reconnaissance satellites, and states-parties were forbidden from concealing their missiles to impede verification activities. Both states-parties could carry out on-site inspections at each other's facilities in the United States and Soviet Union and at specified bases in Belgium, Italy, the Netherlands, the United Kingdom, West Germany, and Czechoslovakia.

Eddie.

[otlichnik]

It seems that this badge would be for the Soviet "minders" who escorted the Western arms inspectors around USSR.

Shawn