Non-nuke confab starts in Mexico City, Hiroshima mayor speaks up

Japan Policy & Politics, May 2, 2005

MEXICO CITY, April 27 Kyodo

The three-day Conference of Nuclear-Weapon-Free Zones started Tuesday in Mexico City, ahead of an international conference to review the Nuclear Non-Proliferation Treaty from May 2 to 27 in New York.

The conference brought together for the first time nonnuclear zone treaty parties from four regions -- Latin America and the Caribbean, the South Pacific, South East Asia, and Africa, aiming to send a message to the New York meeting.

The participants will adopt a final declaration urging nuclear-weapon states to act on a document adopted at a 2000 NPT review meeting in which the five nuclear powers committed to an ''unequivocal undertaking'' for a nuclear-free world.

At the opening ceremony, Mayor Tadatoshi Akiba of Japan's Hiroshima, atomic-bombed in 1945, delivered an address.

Speaking in English, he said, ''On this 60th anniversary, really listen to the Hibakusha, learn from them, act,'' referring to the victims of the bombing.

He delivered an address representing about 1,000 mayors in the world, as the president of a nongovernmental organization called Mayor for Peace.

Akiba called for total abolition of nuclear weapons by 2020 -- a plan which the group of mayors will present to the NPT review conference.

Sergio de Queiroz Duarte, chairman of the NPT review conference, said the meeting will ''contribute fundamentally and crucially to the process'' of the New York conference.

Mohamed Elbaradei, director general of the International Atomic Energy Agency, said the meeting is important in that the participants from the regions opened ''a forum for expanded regional dialogue on the issue of security,'' which will be invaluable for the Middle East and the Korean Peninsula.

Ninety-one treaty parties took part in the ceremony and 38 other countries participated as observers.