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Hiroshima, Nagasaki Mayors Criticize U.S. Plutonium Test

Thursday, August 22, 2013

Tokyo- (PanOrient News) The mayors of Hiroshima and Nagasaki have sent letters of protest to U.S. President Barack Obama respectively following an announcement that the United States had conducted a plutonium test between April and June this year.

"[The tests] have betrayed the hopes of the hibakusha (bomb survivors) and the millions who seek a nuclear-weapon-free world," the Mayor of Hiroshima, Kazumi Matsui, wrote.

Nagasaki Mayor, Tomihisa Taue, pointed out that the tests contradicted Obama's commitments to nuclear disarmament.

"You vowed to pursue peace and security of a world without nuclear weapons in Prague in 2009. Furthermore, you described concrete objectives of nuclear disarmament in Berlin in June of this year. Our bombed city had renewed expectations of your attitude on the abolition of nuclear weapons," he wrote.

"I feel strong indignation regarding the fact that you continue to conduct nuclear tests despite the fact that you expressed your commitment to nuclear disarmament this June by inviting Russia to start negotiations regarding further reduction of nuclear weapons," Matsui argued.

Both mayors, whose cities had both been bombed by atomic weapons during World War Two, called on the United States to stop the nuclear tests and "strive for the earliest possible realization of a world free from nuclear weapons."

PanOrient News



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