World IN BRIEF : AFRICA : 43 Nations Sign Antinuclear Treaty

Representatives of 43 African nations declared their continent a nuclear-free zone, pledging not to build, test or stockpile nuclear weapons. The treaty concluded 30 years of work that began as a response to French nuclear tests in the Sahara and ended last year with a draft treaty in Pelindaba, a nuclear site at the heart of South Africa’s now-dismantled weapons program. Egyptian President Hosni Mubarak, who opened the meeting in Cairo, said the treaty marked “the threshold of a new historic era.”