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Energy
Hiroshima, Nagasaki Mayors Lead Protest against Japan-India Nuclear Talks
Saturday, July 3, 2010
Genbaku Dome
Tokyo -- Hiroshima Mayor Tadatoshi Akiba and Nagasaki Deputy Mayor Masanobu Chita traveled to Tokyo yesterday to present a petition to Foreign Minister Katsuya Okada demanding that talks on Japan-India cooperation in the sphere of nuclear energy be halted.
"This is equivalent to admitting India as a nuclear weapons possessing nation and it cannot but be related to the breaking of the NPT system," the two mayors contended.
The meeting took place at the Ministry of Foreign Affairs building in central Tokyo.
Foreign Minister Okada explained that the government had no intention of changing its policy: "India has not responded to our requests that it abandon nuclear weapons and join the NPT, and as a practical matter we don't believe that it will. The United States and France have already begun nuclear cooperation, and the peaceful use of nuclear energy has an impact on global development. We have also received requests from our industrial world, and so made a tough decision."
In a related move, the Hiroshima Alliance for Nuclear Weapons Abolition also sent a petition to the government arguing that a Japan-India nuclear agreement would be "clearly a violation of international law."
On the same day that Okada met the mayors of Hiroshima and Nagasaki, the foreign minister also announced the establishment of an advisory panel of academics and experts on nuclear disarmament and nonproliferation.
The panel is intended to "achieve the peace and security of a world without nuclear weapons" and to demonstrate Japan's intention to "exercise leadership in the international community" in this sphere.
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