Shevardnadze in Cuba After Visit to Mexico

Soviet Foreign Minister Eduard A. Shevardnadze flew to Cuba on Sunday after warning during his Mexican visit that if the United States keeps building new weapons, the Soviets will do the same.

President Fidel Castro received Shevardnadze on his arrival in Havana for talks with Cuban officials, the Cuban news agency Prensa Latina said in a dispatch monitored in Mexico City.

Shevardnadze’s three days of meetings and cultural tours in Mexico City were the first state visit to Mexico by a high Soviet official since Anastas I. Mikoyan, vice president of the Council of Ministers, visited in 1959.

Throughout his meetings, Shevardnadze praised Mexico’s efforts for nuclear disarmament through its participation in the Group of Six. The group, which also includes Argentina, Greece, Sweden, India and Tanzania, offered in August to help monitor any U.S.-Soviet nuclear test ban agreement.

At a news conference Saturday night, Shevardnadze said the world has recently seen “a wave of hostility against the nuclear weapon, against nuclear explosions.”

“Meanwhile in the United States, new kinds of weapons are being created,” he said, referring specifically to reports of electromagnetic guns being developed for the spaced-based missile defense system called “Star Wars.”

Shevardnadze said that the guns may become a potent weapon in conventional warfare and be as powerful as nuclear weapons and that the Soviet Union would be obliged to develop similar weapons.