ID :
337268
Wed, 08/06/2014 - 09:07
Auther :

Hiroshima Calls for Forward-Looking Dialogue

Hiroshima, Aug. 6 (Jiji Press)--Hiroshima Mayor Kazumi Matsui called for forward-looking dialogue toward the abolition of nuclear weapons at a ceremony Wednesday to mark the 69th anniversary of the U.S. atomic bombing of the western Japan city. Describing atomic bombs as "absolute evil," Matsui said in a peace declaration, "To eliminate the evil, we must transcend nationality, race, religion and other differences, value person-to-person relationships, and build a world that allows forward-looking dialogue." "Military force just gives rise to new cycles of hatred," he said. The annual event, held at the Hiroshima Peace Memorial Park, was attended by a total of some 45,000 people including Prime Minister Shinzo Abe, atomic bomb survivors and bereaved family members of the victims of the nuclear attack. Among the attendants were representatives from 68 countries and the delegation of the European Union to Japan, including those from nuclear nations--U.S. Ambassador to Japan Caroline Kennedy and the delegates of Britain, France and Russia. After a Peace Bell was tolled, they offered a minute of silence from 8:15 a.m. (11:15 p.m. Tuesday GMT), the time that the U.S. atomic bomb was dropped on Hiroshima on Aug. 6, 1945. In the peace declaration, Matsui urged the Japanese government to "accept the full weight of the fact that we have avoided war for 69 years thanks to the noble pacifism of the Japanese constitution" and "continue as a nation of peace in both word and deed." The mayor called on U.S. President Barack Obama and leaders of other nuclear nations to visit Hiroshima and Nagasaki, the other atomic-bombed city, as soon as possible and "apply all your resources to a new security system based on trust and dialogue." Abe said at the ceremony that Japan, which experienced calamities of nuclear weapons as the only nation to have suffered nuclear attacks in human history, has the responsibility to certainly realize a world without nuclear weapons. "Japan has a duty to continue handing down the enormities of nuclear weapons to future generations and the rest of the world," Abe said. Abe referred to key events next year--the 70th anniversary of the atomic bombing on Hiroshima and another on Nagasaki, southwestern Japan, on Aug. 9, 1945, and a quinquennial review conference on the Nuclear Nonproliferation Treaty. Japan will push ahead with further efforts to realize a world without nuclear weapons, he said. In the past year, 5,507 survivors of the Hiroshima atomic bombing died, bringing the total death toll from the attack to 292,325. END

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