Mexico is one of the few countries which has technical capabilities to manufacture nuclear weapons. However it has renounced them and pledged to only use its nuclear technology for peaceful purposes following the Treaty of Tlatelolco in 1968. In the 1970s Mexico's national institute for nuclear research successfully achieved the creation of highly enriched uranium which is used in nuclear power plants and in the construction of nuclear weapons. However the country agreed in 2012 to downgrade the high enriched uranium used on its nuclear power plants to low enriched uranium, the process was realised with the assistance of the International Atomic Energy Agency. It is unknown if Mexico ever created or possessed nuclear or any other kind of mass destruction weapons.