Alfonso Garcia Robles; Co-Winner of Nobel Peace Prize

MEXICO CITY — Alfonso Garcia Robles, the Nobel Prize-winning former foreign minister who represented Mexico at the founding of the United Nations, has died at age 80, the Foreign Ministry announced.

The ministry said Tuesday that Garcia Robles, who still held the rank of ambassador, died late Monday night in Mexico City.

Garcia Robles was a co-winner of the 1982 Nobel Peace Prize for his authorship of the 1967 Treaty of Tlatelolco, which established a nuclear-free zone in Latin America, and other disarmament efforts at the United Nations.

In awarding the prize, the Nobel committee said the ambassador and his co-winner, Alva Myrdal of Sweden, “helped to open the eyes of the world to the threat mankind faces in continued nuclear armament.”

In his Nobel acceptance speech, Garcia Robles said the Treaty of Tlatelolco had become “an inspiration for states who want to promote a world totally free of nuclear weapons.”

The year he won the award, Garcia Robles urged the United States to limit its competition with the Soviet Union to conventional weapons and “forget about nuclear arms.”

Foreign Minister Fernando Solana Morales said the ambassador’s death was “a great loss not only for Mexico but for the world.”

Garcia Robles was born in the central state of Michoacan during the Mexican Revolution. He studied law at the National University of Mexico, the University of Paris and the Academy of International Law in The Hague.

He joined Mexico’s foreign service in 1939 and served in Sweden and Brazil. In 1945, Garcia Robles was the Mexican representative to the San Francisco conference, which established the United Nations, and he was the U.N. director of political affairs from 1946 to 1957.