Full text in PDF format only. (To view this file, you must have Adobe Acrobat version 3.0 or more recent.) Thomas Fischer is a Ph.D. candidate at the Department of Political Science, University of Zurich, Switzerland, and a research assistant at the Center for International Studies (CIS), Swiss Federal Institute of Technology, Zurich. * * * On 6 November 1962, the Swiss ambassador and former President of the International Committee of the Red Cross (ICRC), Paul Rüegger, embarked on a delicate mission to negotiate with the United Nations Secretary-General and the representatives of the two superpowers and Cuba in New York. His task was to specify and obtain prior acceptance of the conditions under which the ICRC was prepared to lend its good offices to the United Nations and the parties involved in the Cuban missile crisis, so as to help ease the tension that had arisen from the secret introduction of Soviet nuclear weapons in the Caribbean. This article deals with the unusual role the ICRC was ready to play in that crisis and sheds new light on how it came to be engaged in these highly political matters.