Hiroshima mayor, ambassadors send out peace messages

Aug. 6, Kyodo - Hiroshima Mayor Tadatoshi Akiba and diplomats representing four countries read out messages appealing for world peace Friday, the 54th anniversary of the atomic bombing that devastated the city.

Akiba, who delivered a peace declaration earlier in the day to the annual peace memorial ceremony, read the same statement in English in front of the A-bomb Dome during a ''peace candle'' ceremony. The dome was surrounded by 3,500 rectangular parallelepiped candles bearing drawings and messages for peace.

Akiba is the first Hiroshima mayor to deliver the declaration in English. The message is also being carried over the Internet, Hiroshima city officials said.

The declaration stressed contributions made by A-bomb survivors and urged younger generations to learn from victims' achievements.

Envoys from Yugoslavia, Costa Rica, Belarus and Cambodia also gave speeches in front of some 400 people in English and their mother tongues, expressing the wish for a world without wars.

Yugoslav Ambassador to Japan Radoslav Bulajic said that both the A-bombing in Hiroshima and air strikes against Yugoslavia by the North Atlantic Treaty Organization killed ''innumerable innocent civilians.'' Yugoslavia and Japan, he said, are both pressing the world not to repeat such tragedies in the future.

Acting ambassadors of Costa Rica, which abolished its military in 1949, and Belarus, which was extensively affected by the 1986 Chernobyl nuclear disaster, urged the total elimination of nuclear weapons.

A Cambodian representative said his country wishes that tragedies caused by war and which result in human suffering will not be repeated. The country was devastated by a prolonged civil war.

During the ceremony, the diplomats lit candles on which they inscribed messages of peace. Later, they joined Akiba to float paper lanterns down rivers running alongside the Peace Memorial Park in a gesture to console the souls of people who died in the 1945 blast.

The peace messages by the four countries' envoys as well as messages from ambassadors of 40 other countries in Japan are currently on display at the city's Peace Memorial Museum. The messages were contributed in response to a request from Akiba.

Picture Caption: Hiroshima Mayor Tadatoshi Akiba (right), who is reading a peace declaration in English during burning "peace candles" in the dark = Aug 6th, 7:35 PM, in front of the A-bomb Dome, Naka-ku, Hiroshima-shi
(Eds: Presentation of Akiba's peace declaration can be seen at http://www.pcf.city.hiroshima.jp/peacesite/)