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Hiroshima announces names of 9 participants in Summit of Nobel Peace Laureates, including Dalai Lama

by Yumi Kanazaki, Staff Writer

On September 21, the City of Hiroshima announced the names of the participants in the international conference "The 2010 World Summit of Nobel Peace Laureates," which will be held in Hiroshima from November 12 to 14. Nine Nobel Peace Prize laureates, including the 14th Dalai Lama, the supreme leader of Tibetan Buddhism, and Mikhail Gorbachev, former president of the Soviet Union, will gather in the A-bombed city of Hiroshima for the summit.

The summit's secretariat in Rome, an organizer of the gathering, informed the City of Hiroshima of the names of the participants to date. The 14th Dalai Lama will visit Hiroshima for the first time since November 2006.

The other participants are former South African president Frederik Willem De Klerk, former Polish president Lech Walesa, East Timor president José Ramos-Horta, former Costa Rican president Oscar Arias Sanchez, Mairead Corrigan Maguire, a peace activist from Northern Ireland, Mohamed ElBaradei, former director general of the International Atomic Energy Agency (IAEA), and Shirin Ebadi, women's rights activist from Iran.

Representatives of 13 organizations, including International Physicians for the Prevention of Nuclear War (IPPNW) and Medecins Sans Frontiers (MSF), which both received the Nobel Peace Prize as organizations, will also take part in the summit. Sadako Ogata, former United Nations High Commissioner for Refugees, will be invited to the summit as well.

The participants will hold discussion on the theme "The Legacy of Hiroshima: A World without Nuclear Weapons" in Hiroshima on November 12 and 13, and announce the Hiroshima Final Declaration on November 14.

In August, the summit's secretariat released a statement jointly signed by Mr. Gorbachev and four others that called for U.S. President Barack Obama to attend the summit. The secretariat has not yet received a reply.

Hiroshima Mayor Tadatoshi Akiba, who serves as president of a local council that is supporting and promoting the summit, will soon send a letter calling on Mr. Obama to attend the summit. The letter will be jointly signed by Hiroshima Governor Hidehiko Yuzaki, Tetsuya Ota, president of the Hiroshima Chamber of Commerce and Industry, and Alexander Mejia, director of the Hiroshima office of the United Nations Institute for Training and Research (UNITAR). The local council is comprised of Hiroshima City, Hiroshima Prefecture, the Hiroshima Chamber of Commerce and Industry, and UNITAR.

(Originally published on September 22, 2010)

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