Brazil: Under Pressure to Give Up Missiles

The Risk Report
Volume 1 Number 3 (April 1995) Page 1

Only a few years ago, Brazil seemed destined to become the second nuclear power in the Western Hemisphere. It was producing enriched uranium the material that destroyed Hiroshima and refusing to sign the Nuclear Nonproliferation Treaty (NPT), a pact requiring it to foreswear the bomb. Brazil was also building missiles for export and a rocket big enough to deliver a nuclear warhead more than 3,600 kilometers.

Today, Brazil is still enriching uranium and building the large rocket, but its government has signed the Treaty of Tlatelolco, a Latin American nonproliferation treaty, and has thrown open all its nuclear sites to international inspectors.

This remarkable turnaround was produced by an unprecedented agreement with Argentina to ban the bomb in Latin America.