TOKYO, August 6 (Itar-Tass) - Hiroshima Mayor Kazumi Matsui issued an appeal to the international community Tuesday to invest all the best efforts into stopping the spread of nuclear weapons.
He said it in a speech in Peace Memorial Park in the city center as he was reading out a declaration that contained an appeal for full disarmament.
Hiroshima will do everything in its power along with other cities, nongovernmental organizations and the United Nations to curb the proliferation of nuclear weapons at an earliest possible date and to ban it altogether, Matsui said after a minute’s silence, in the course of which dozens of thousands of people closed their eyes and put their hands together on their chests in a remembrance prayer.
The mayor said he grieved over the fate of the people who had died August 6, 1945, during the atrocious bombing of Hiroshima by the U.S. He stressed the importance of “turning to a system of security guarantees based on the principles of trustworthiness and dialogue.
Matsui also voiced concern over the current cooperation between Japan and India, which is a nuclear power, in the sphere of peaceful utilization of atomic energy. If even the Japanese-Indian agreements underpin economic cooperation between the countries, it certainly impedes a full renunciation of nuclear weapons.
Commemorative functions devoted to the 68th anniversary since the nuclear bombing of Hiroshima were held Tuesday. More than 50,000 people came to Peace Park and their scope included the heads of diplomatic missions of over 70 countries
One of them was the U.S. ambassador to Japan, John Roos, who became the first in a long chain of postwar U.S. ambassadors to visit the commemorative events in Hiroshima in 2010. He attends them every year since then.
The list of dignitaries who came to Hiroshima this year also includes the President of the UN General Assembly Vuk Jeremic and filmmaker Oliver Stone, who produced a do documentary serial about the bombings of Hiroshima and Nagasaki.