MOSCOW, August 6 /TASS/. The Kremlin will not comment the proposal of the Russian State Duma speaker to convene an international tribunal on atomic bombings of two Japanese cities - Hiroshima and Nagasaki - in August 1945 during WWII, Kremlin spokesman Dmitry Peskov said on Thursday.
But the A-bombings were certainly "an inhumane and absolutely unjustified action," Peskov stressed.
"I would not give any comment," Peskov told TASS when asked to assess the remarks of Russian State Duma Speaker Sergey Naryshkin.
"It’s true that the use of nuclear weapons is in question. It was the only example in human history and hopefully the last one when nuclear weapons were used. It was inhumane and absolutely unjustified," Peskov stressed.
"The Kremlin is commemorating the anniversary /of US atomic bombings of the Japanese cities/ together with other people; we are expressing our sympathy and condolences to the people of Japan, who had to survive that terrible disaster," Peskov went on to say. "Such tragedies will never recur," he stressed.
In his speech at a roundtable meeting devoted to the 70th anniversary of atomic bombings of Hiroshima and Nagasaki on August 5, Naryshkin suggested establishing an international tribunal on these attacks.
"The atomic bombings of Japan have never been considered by any international war tribunal so far. However, crimes against humanity have no period of limitation," the Duma speaker stressed.
"One thing is certain in my view: the method, which the United States chose back in 1945 did not rest on considerations of humanism or was dictated by any military need," Naryshkin who heads the Russian Historical Society said.
"Japanese militarists committed plenty of atrocities against civilians in China, Korea and other Asian countries during WWII. The verdicts passed by the Tokyo and Khabarovsk tribunals gave a civilized reply to their conduct. But civilians in Hiroshima and Nagasaki were of no relation to those crimes," Naryshkin stressed.
He also criticized the United States for attempts to hush up the tragedies of Hiroshima and Nagasaki.
"I have no doubt that the barbarity and overproportion of what was done is obvious to the US authorities. But instead of right comprehension of history, they want to bury it in oblivion," Naryshkin told the round table meeting that took place at the Moscow State Institute of International Relations (MGIMO).
Naryshkin said the interests of peace and security were not the root cause behind the US behavior. It is a matter of "national prestige", he explained.
"The incumbent US authorities are not trying to conceal the tragedies of Hiroshima and Nagasaki, which is impossible, but the hypocrisy and cynicism of the US leaders who ruled the country at that time," Naryshkin said.
"Their behavior is casting a shadow on the modern US policy, which has certainly inherited the ideology of exclusiveness; immunity from mistakes and arrogance of power," the speaker of the lower house of Russian parliament said.
"The West’s stake on the use of force and neglect for human lives led to hundreds of thousands of innocent victims in /the former/ Yugoslavia, Iraq, Libya and Syria. Now the previously peaceful Ukraine has also joined this list," the Russian lawmaker stressed.
On August 6, 1945, during World War II (1939-45), an American B-29 bomber dropped the world’s first deployed atomic bomb over the Japanese city of Hiroshima. The explosion wiped out 90% of the city and immediately killed 80,000 people; tens of thousands more would later die of radiation exposure. Three days later, on August 9, a second B-29 dropped another A-bomb on Nagasaki, killing an estimated 40,000 people. Japan’s Emperor Hirohito announced his country’s unconditional surrender in World War II in a radio address on August 15, citing the devastating power of "a new and most cruel bomb.".