United Nations Secretary General Antonio Guterres stated that nuclear weapons were “nonsense” during a ceremony in Japan marking the 77th anniversary of the atomic bombing of Hiroshima on Saturday.
Guterres became the first serving U.N. chief to visit Hiroshima since 2010. In a flurry of activity, he conversed with atomic bomb survivors, met with Mayor Kazumi Matsui and toured the Hiroshima Peace Memorial Museum with Prime Minister Fumio Kishida.
“Nuclear weapons are nonsense. Three-quarters of a century later, we must ask what we’ve learned from the mushroom cloud that swelled above this city in 1945,” Guterres urged during the solemn event at Hiroshima Peace Memorial Park attended by dozens of people, including hibakusha, young peace activists, Japan’s Prime Minister and other local authorities.pointed out.
It is totally unacceptable for states in possession of nuclear weapons to admit the possibility of a nuclear war, he added.
The UN Secretary-General warned that a new arms race is picking up speed and world leaders are enhancing stockpiles at a cost of hundreds of billions of dollars with almost 13,000 nuclear weapons currently held in arsenals around the world.
“…Crises with grave nuclear undertones are spreading fast — from the Middle East to the Korean peninsula, to Russia’s invasion of Ukraine… Humanity is playing with a loaded gun”, he cautioned.
The UN chief called on members of the Treaty on the Non-Proliferation of Nuclear Weapons “to work urgently to eliminate the stockpiles that threaten our future, to strengthen dialogue, diplomacy and negotiation, and to support my disarmament agenda by eliminating these devices of destruction”.
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