Nagasaki mayor to attend first U.N. nuclear ban meeting in June

Nagasaki – Nagasaki Mayor Tomihisa Taue will attend the first meeting of parties to a U.N. treaty banning nuclear weapons in Vienna next month to rally the global community against the use of such armaments, the municipal government said Monday.

“We need to raise international public opinion on halting the use of nuclear weapons” amid drastic changes to the security situation following Russia’s invasion of Ukraine, Taue said during a meeting with city assembly members.

His remarks came ahead of his participation in the three-day meeting of the signatory states to the Treaty on the Prohibition of Nuclear Weapons from June 21. He will be joined by Hiroshima Mayor Kazumi Matsui, who has expressed his intent to take part.

Nagasaki and Hiroshima were the two Japanese cities attacked separately by the U.S. with atomic bombs in August 1945 in the final stages of World War II. Their mayors have been actively campaigning for a nuclear-free world.

Taue has been calling on the government to sign and ratify the treaty and participate in the meeting as an observer.

The Japan Confederation of A- and H-Bomb Sufferers Organizations has also said it will send some A-bomb survivors, known as hibakusha, to the June meeting.

The treaty is the first international pact outlawing the development, testing, possession and use of nuclear weapons. It came into effect in January last year with the support of many nonnuclear states.

But nuclear-weapon states, such as the United States, are not part of it, while Japan has not signed the pact due to its security alliance with the U.S., which offers the shelter of its nuclear umbrella.

Concerns are lingering over Russia possibly using nuclear weapons during its war in Ukraine, which began in late February, although the U.S. has said it does not see an increased risk of Moscow doing so.