Mayors for Peace Adopts Nagasaki Appeal for Nuke-Free World

Nagasaki, Aug. 10 (Jiji Press)--Mayors for Peace, a group with 7,417 member cities in 162 countries and regions, adopted on Thursday the Nagasaki Appeal showing its determination to realize the abolition of nuclear weapons and lasting world peace. The document, adopted on the final day of the organization's ninth general meeting in the southwestern Japan city of Nagasaki, calls on countries to observe the Nuclear Nonproliferation Treaty and join the U.N. treaty to ban nuclear weapons adopted in July. The document also calls for creating opportunities for people to learn about the realities of nuclear bombs and war. Representatives from 170 organizations and cities in 34 countries attended the general meeting, which started Monday, and discussed an action plan covering a period to 2020. Mayors for Peace also adopted a special resolution requesting that the nuclear weapons ban treaty be put into force early. The group holds its general meetings alternately in Nagasaki and the western Japan city of Hiroshima, both of which were devastated by the U.S. atomic bombings in the closing days of World War II in 1945. The next meeting will be held in Hiroshima in 2020. "Let us make efforts together to take a firm first step to realize a peaceful world free of nuclear weapons by 2020," Hiroshima Mayor Kazumi Matsui, president of Mayors for Peace, said in a speech at the closing ceremony. END