WEEKEND FEATURE: Celebrating 40 nuclear-weapon-free years in Latin America and the Caribbean

by Diego Cevallos

MEXICO CITY, Mexico, February 16, 2007 - Latin America and the Caribbean celebrated Wednesday the 40th anniversary of the pact that declared this region free of nuclear weapons and made it a leader in nuclear disarmament in the world.

The Treaty for the Prohibition of Nuclear Weapons in Latin America and the Caribbean, also known as the Tlatelolco Treaty, was the first of its kind, and encouraged other regions of the world to create similar instruments.

However, the body that administers the treaty is in serious financial trouble.

The 40th anniversary of the Tlatelolco Treaty was celebrated with a ceremony in Mexico and a seminar in the Mexican Foreign Ministry.

Tlatelolco is the name of the area in the capital where the headquarters of the Foreign Ministry were located on Feb. 14, 1967, when the document was signed.

Mexico became the driving force behind the treaty after the 1962 Cuban missile crisis, when the region almost found itself in the middle of a nuclear war between the United States and the Soviet Union after Soviet missiles were installed in Cuba.

All of the countries in the region are parties to the landmark treaty that prohibits the testing, use, manufacture, production or acquisition of nuclear weapons in the entire region.

After hesitating for years, Argentina and Cuba finally signed the treaty. Buenos Aires ratified it in 1994, while Havana signed it in 1995 and ratified it in 2002.

A compliance oversight organisation was created, OPANAL (Organisation for the Prohibition of Nuclear Weapons in Latin America and the Caribbean), to enforce the treaty and promote agreements with other regions.

This regional body got the big nuclear powers -- the United States, France, Britain, Russia and China -- to sign Protocol II of the Tlatelolco Treaty, which obligates them not to use or threaten to use nuclear weapons against contracting parties.

OPANAL also encouraged other regions of the world to declare themselves nuclear-weapon-free zones in populated areas, through the Treaty of Rarotonga (1986) in the South Pacific, the Pelindaba Treaty (1996) for the African continent, the Bangkok Treaty (1997) in Southeast Asia and the treaty adopted in September 2006 in Semipalatinsk by five countries of Central Asia.

Today, a total of 109 countries are party to treaties that create nuclear-weapon-free zones.

On several occasions, countries in the region have committed themselves to strengthening the Mexico-based OPANAL, in order to further the cause of global disarmament.

But they have not lived up to that pledge. According to internal reports, OPANAL is suffering serious financial problems and could soon even close its doors, because many of the members have not kept up with their contributions to the regional body, whose annual budget is around 300,000 dollars.

The preamble to the Tlatelolco Treaty states that ”militarily denuclearised zones are not an end in themselves but rather a means for achieving general and complete disarmament at a later stage.”

On Tuesday, at the United Nations Conference on Disarmament, which is meeting this month in Geneva, Latin American delegates stated that the mere existence of nuclear weapons represents a threat to humanity, and called for their total elimination as the only absolute guarantee against their use or the threat of use.

The statement, signed by Argentina, Brazil, Chile, Colombia, Cuba, Ecuador, Mexico, Peru and Venezuela, indicates that nuclear-weapon-free zones play an important role in strengthening the nuclear non-proliferation regime and contribute to disarmament.

”The Tlatelolco Treaty was a pioneer and a guiding light for other instruments,” Professor Santiago Vélez, a lawyer in international law, told IPS. ”But the most important aspect is that it kept the region free of many headaches, conflicts and expenses linked to the aspiration of having nuclear weapons.”

Greenpeace congratulated the region for its commitment to remaining nuclear-weapon-free and suggested that the countries take another step: curb the use of nuclear energy to produce electricity. The international environmental watchdog expressed concern over the risk of accidents, the accumulation of toxic waste and the general lack of transparency and secrecy that surrounds the nuclear industry.

But plans underway in Argentina, Brazil and Mexico, the only countries in the region that use nuclear energy, would seem to make it unlikely that the request will prosper.

The adherents to the Tlatelolco Treaty have reaffirmed their ”inalienable right” to carry out R&D in nuclear energy and to use it for peaceful ends.

Brazil, one of the nine countries in the world that enrich uranium, plans to install a third nuclear power plant, while Argentina and Mexico aim to expand from two to four reactors each.

These plans could lead to a doubling of the proportion of electricity produced by nuclear plants in the region, which currently stands at 3.5 percent of total electricity generation. (IPS)