Telegram from the Indian Embassy of Brazil, 'Statement Made on 9th May 1967 by the Minister of Foreign Relations of Brazil'

FROM: Embassy of Brazil, India

TO: MEA, India

Date: May 11, 1967

“ Statement made on 9^th May 1967 by the Minister of Foreign Relations of Brazil on the subject of the agreement relating to the proscription of nuclear weapons in Latin American pursuant to the decision announced by the president of the Republic during his recent stay at Punta del Este, Brazil has signed today I Mexico the treaty to ban nuclear weapons in Latin America, thus joining the eighteen Latin American nations that have already subscribed this regional pact. In signing the treaty of Mexico, we have clearly enunciated our peaceable intentions, affirming at the same time our manifest determination to promote the use of nuclear energy for peaceful purposes as actively as possible, either on our own account or in association with Latin America, without any kind of restrictions, in favour of the economic development of each of our countries and concurrently of Latin American integration as planned last month at Punta del Este. Brazil is keenly interested in the treaty of Mexico precisely because that instrument, the first of its kind to aim at protecting an inhabited area of the earth, covers both the positive and the negative aspects of the utilization of nuclear power since, while effectively proscribing warlike objectives it incentives the pursuit of peaceful aims, waying [sic], furthermore, a juridical basis of association for the nations of Latin America, with or without the cooperation of the nuclear powers, with or without the participation of the non-nuclear countries on other continents, to undertake multinational projects of economic development through the utilization of nuclear energy for gigantic works of geographic engineering such as the interconnection of river basins and the excavation of canals, ports and inland waterways, so as in the near future to make Latin American integration a reality of accelerated progress. Soon, in Geneva, the eighteen nation committee on disarmament will meet to resume its labors on the preparation of a world treaty designed to prevent the spread of nuclear weapons. The Secretary General of the Brazilian Ministry of External Affairs designed to be present at the outset of the work of the Geneva Conference with the object of defining with the object of defining the Brazilian contention that the Latin American treaty is a precedent that should exert decisive influence on the framing of the world treaty in such a away as fully to preserve the right of the Latin American countries to an unrestricted use of nuclear energy for peaceful purposes with the purpose of preventing the creation, within the framework of a world treaty, of any let or hindrance to the integrated and dynamic development of Latin America”