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Disarmament DiplomacyIn the NewsMayors for Peace Launch New Campaign to Ban Nuclear WeaponsResolution on the Abolition of Nuclear Weapons, 6th Executive Conference of the Mayors for Peace, October 18, 2003Responding to a unanimous sense of crisis regarding a general lack of progress in nuclear disarmament and specific emerging threats to the international Treaty on the Non-Proliferation of Nuclear Weapons (NPT) regime, the Executive Committee of Mayors for Peace, meeting in Manchester on October 17 and 18, 2003, has approved an Emergency Campaign to Ban Nuclear Weapons centred around the NPT Review Process. The campaign will be officially launched at the 2nd Global Citizens Conference to be held in Nagasaki November 22 through 24. The high points of this campaign are: 1. A high-level delegation of mayors will attend the preparatory committee meeting of NPT in New York (April 26 through May 7) to interact and consult with government officials and NGO representatives. 2. Mayors worldwide will be urged to promote popular events in their own cities to bring the nuclear threat, the 60th anniversary of the atomic bombings of Hiroshima and Nagasaki, and the upcoming NPT Review Conference, to greater public awareness. 3. The campaign will mobilize an overwhelming presence of mayors, NGO representatives and citizens at the NPT Review Conference in New York in late April 2005, together with public action in cities around the world. The World Conference of Mayors for Peace was established by the mayors of Hiroshima and Nagasaki in 1982 to promote solidarity and cooperation among cities in arousing the collective international will to create a peaceful world free from nuclear weapons. In any war, it is cities and the people living in them that suffer. As Hiroshima and Nagasaki attest, this suffering becomes total destruction when nuclear weapons are involved. To protect their citizens' lives, it is incumbent on all mayors to make every effort to prevent war and eliminate nuclear weapons. As of October 2003, Mayors for Peace membership stands at 554 cities in 107 countries and regions and is increasing rapidly. This is evidence of a growing international consensus that it is nuclear weapons, not cities, that should be destroyed. More than ever, the vast majority of people, cities, and nations wish to live in a world that resolves its conflicts without violence. The NPT Review Conference in May 2000 unanimously adopted a final document that included the promise of "an unequivocal undertaking by the nuclear weapon States to accomplish the total elimination of their nuclear arsenals." With most of the international community pressing for fulfilment of that promise, the United States has publicly stated that it intends to develop so-called "useable" nuclear weapons and reserves the right to use them preemptively even against non-nuclear-weapon states. In the face of these new threat from the US, North Korea has withdrawn from the NPT and announced that it possesses nuclear weapons. India, Israel, and Pakistan have yet to sign the NPT and are certainly not encouraged to do so by the present climate. Thus, the NPT regime, the world's most important agreement regarding the control of nuclear weapons, is teetering on the verge of collapse. The Mayors for Peace hereby demand that national governments increase dialogue, work conscientiously to build trust, maintain and strengthen the NPT regime, and take the following steps. (1) We demand that nuclear-weapon states and de facto nuclear-weapon states, including non-parties to the NPT, immediately cease all nuclear development programs and bring the Comprehensive Test Ban Treaty into force forthwith. (2) At the 2005 NPT Review Conference in New York, just prior to the 60th anniversary of the atomic bombings, we demand that States parties call for work to begin on mapping the road to a nuclear weapons free world and a commitment to reach that by 2020. We hereby declare our renewed determination to act on behalf of our citizens to eliminate nuclear weapons and create a world without war. Source and further information: http://www.pcf.city.hiroshima.jp/mayors/english/ © 2003 The Acronym Institute. |