“We’re very concerned about the issue of peace in Latin America, because we thought we had secured the concept of Latin America and the Caribbean as a zone of peace and a nuclear-weapon-free zone, yet we are noticing movements that run counter to that,” Lubetkin said.

  “We’re receiving information—which we are trying to verify—regarding exercises that go against the idea that Latin America must be a zone of peace,” he told the newspaper *La Diaria*.

  He mentioned the Ecuadorian government’s intention to open a US military base—”something the referendum rejected.”

  “I believe there is a lack of appreciation in our region regarding the significance of being a nuclear-weapon-free region,” he opined.

  “No other region is in the same situation. Now, if those mechanisms are activated in a world that is taking on a rather crazy dimension, it will affect us not only regarding regional stability but even from an economic standpoint,” he warned.

  He added that Colombia “is one of the cases we’re watching. There is another one I am keeping confidential, but I know there is a whole series of movements underway that are not traditional.”

  “That worries us greatly; wars lead nowhere. Undoubtedly, the scale of the slaughter in Gaza was massive. Apparently, there was an objective to eliminate Hamas. So many people have been killed, yet Hamas remains alive.”

jdt/ool