Hiroshima to reject nuclear umbrella

Hiroshima Mayor Tadatoshi Akiba will urge the government to leave the nuclear umbrella provided by the United States in the peace declaration he is set to deliver Friday to mark the 65th anniversary of the city's atomic bombing.

Akiba on Monday announced the outline of the declaration to be read at the annual ceremony held at the Peace Memorial Park.

Akiba will become the second Hiroshima mayor after Takashi Hiraoka in 1997 to call on the government to reject the U.S. nuclear umbrella.

"It is an absurd idea to think about national security while being dependent on nuclear weapons," Akiba said at a news conference Monday.

He said he would praise the momentum toward nuclear disarmament that developed during the review conference of the Nuclear Nonproliferation Treaty held in New York in May.

Akiba will also call on the Japanese government to take more aggressive measures to write into law the three non-nuclear principles as well as work toward signing a treaty to ban nuclear weapons.

In the peace declaration, Akiba plans to use the Hiroshima dialect to transmit the words of hibakusha to emphasize their feelings of wanting never to repeat the tragedy of 65 years ago.

Akiba will also call for strengthening international public opinion to achieve Hiroshima's goal of eliminating nuclear weapons by 2020.

Ban Ki-moon plans to attend Friday's ceremony, marking his first attendance since becoming secretary-general of the United Nations.

Representatives of three nuclear powers, the United States, Britain and France, will attend for the first time. The United States will be represented by Ambassador John Roos.

Akiba said he would welcome those participants, calling it a "sign that the message of the hibakusha is spreading in the world."

Earlier, Nagasaki Mayor Tomihisa Taue said that his peace declaration would include opposition to the recent start of negotiations between Japan and India for an agreement on exporting nuclear power technology and equipment.

The negotiations began on June 28, and five hibakusha organizations based in Nagasaki have protested the move because India has not signed the Nuclear Nonproliferation Treaty even though it possesses nuclear weapons.

Taue will question how serious the government is about nuclear weapons by pointing to not only the negotiations with India, but also the secret pact with the United States that allowed the U.S. military to bring nuclear weapons into Japan.