The mayor of Hiroshima marked the anniversary of the world’s first atomic bomb attack today by lashing out at the United States for its pursuit of next-generation nuclear weapons, and called on a global ban on all nuclear arms by 2020. Denouncing President George Bush’s administration for its “egocentric” view of the world, Tadatoshi Akiba said Washington had turned its back on other nations. “Ignoring the United Nations and international law, the United States has resumed research to make nuclear weapons smaller and more ’usable,”’ he said at the 59th annual ceremony in the western city’s Peace Memorial Park.
In June, the US Senate approved spending for the Bush administration’s research into – but not development of – new nuclear “bunker buster” and “mini-nuke” warheads. The nuclear bunker buster would be designed to hit targets deep underground, such as subterranean military command centres that are beyond the reach of conventional arms.
The mini-nukes would have the explosive power of less than 5,000 tons of TNT – one-fourth the size of the atomic bomb dropped on Hiroshima. Supporters of the new weapons say they would cause less damage and fewer deaths in the area around a target.
The US has had a self-imposed ban on nuclear testing since 1992.
But Akiba said the world needs to dismantle and ban all weapons like the US atomic bomb that killed or injured 160,000 people on August 6, 1945. He called on nations to attend a nuclear non-proliferation meeting, to be held in May 2005 in New York, and sign a treaty that would eventually abolish nuclear arms by 2020.
http://news.scotsman.com/latest.cfm?id=3301565
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