Hiroshima mayor submits signatures supporting start of negotiations on Nuclear Weapons Convention to NPT preparatory committee
May 10, 2012
by Michiko Tanaka, Staff Writer, dispatched from Vienna
On the evening of May 4 (May 5 in Japan), Hiroshima Mayor Kazumi Matsui submitted signatures to Peter Woolcott, chair of the First Preparatory Committee for the 2015 NPT Review Conference, that called for the start of negotiations on a Nuclear Weapons Convention. Mr. Matsui, currently visiting Vienna, Austria in conjunction with the NPT gathering, submitted the signatures on behalf of Mayors for Peace, for which he serves as president.
Mayors for Peace is holding an A-bomb poster exhibition at the United Nations building which serves as the venue for the preparatory committee meetings. The organization invited Mr. Woolcott to the exhibition and handed him a portion of the 478,303 signatures collected from people in various locations of the world from December 2010.
The mayor stressed, “Nuclear weapons, which can annihilate cities and take scores of lives, must be eliminated from the earth. We call for concrete steps to be taken to conclude a Nuclear Weapons Convention” Mr. Woolcott responded by expressing his gratitude to Mr. Matsui for “undertaking significant efforts to realize a world without nuclear weapons.” Mayors for Peace will send the remaining signatures to U.N. headquarters, located in New York, at a later date.
Mr. Matsui also conferred with the U.N ambassadors from Norway and Sri Lanka, and Tibor Toth, executive secretary of the Preparatory Commission for the Comprehensive Nuclear-Test-Ban Treaty Organization (CTBTO), and asked for their support.
(Originally published on May 6, 2012)
On the evening of May 4 (May 5 in Japan), Hiroshima Mayor Kazumi Matsui submitted signatures to Peter Woolcott, chair of the First Preparatory Committee for the 2015 NPT Review Conference, that called for the start of negotiations on a Nuclear Weapons Convention. Mr. Matsui, currently visiting Vienna, Austria in conjunction with the NPT gathering, submitted the signatures on behalf of Mayors for Peace, for which he serves as president.
Mayors for Peace is holding an A-bomb poster exhibition at the United Nations building which serves as the venue for the preparatory committee meetings. The organization invited Mr. Woolcott to the exhibition and handed him a portion of the 478,303 signatures collected from people in various locations of the world from December 2010.
The mayor stressed, “Nuclear weapons, which can annihilate cities and take scores of lives, must be eliminated from the earth. We call for concrete steps to be taken to conclude a Nuclear Weapons Convention” Mr. Woolcott responded by expressing his gratitude to Mr. Matsui for “undertaking significant efforts to realize a world without nuclear weapons.” Mayors for Peace will send the remaining signatures to U.N. headquarters, located in New York, at a later date.
Mr. Matsui also conferred with the U.N ambassadors from Norway and Sri Lanka, and Tibor Toth, executive secretary of the Preparatory Commission for the Comprehensive Nuclear-Test-Ban Treaty Organization (CTBTO), and asked for their support.
(Originally published on May 6, 2012)
