Cuba Says It’s Ready to Sign Regional Nuclear Arms Pact

Communist-ruled Cuba, the country at the center of the 1962 missile crisis, said Wednesday that it is ready to sign a Latin American treaty prohibiting nuclear weapons if other countries in the region do the same.

“We are ready to sign for the sake of Latin American unity,” Pedro Nunez Mosquera, director of multilateral affairs at the Cuban Foreign Ministry, told the Cuban news agency Prensa Latina.

Mosquera said Cuba has agreed in principle to various modifications to the 1967 Tlatelolco Treaty, which he said will be discussed at a meeting Aug. 26 in Mexico City.

In 1991, Cuba became an observer to the Tlatelolco Treaty group. President Fidel Castro said then that Cuba would be ready to join as soon as other Latin American nations did so, Prensa Latina said.