Outline for August 6 Ceremony Set, NPT President to Attend
7/25/00
The outline of the Hiroshima Peace Memorial Ceremony sponsored by Hiroshima city to be held on the last August 6 of the century in Hiroshima Peace Memorial Park was announced by the city on July 24. In attendance will be Prime Minister Yoshiro Mori, Minister of Health and Welfare Yuji Tsushima, the chairmen of both houses of the Diet, and Mr. Abdallah Baali, president of the Review Conference of States Parties to the Treaty on Nuclear Non-Proliferation (NPT) held in the US this past spring.
The ceremony will begin at 8:00 am. Mayor Tadatoshi Akiba and two representatives of bereaved families will dedicate the names of more than 4,000 survivors of the atomic bombing who died during the past year and newly confirmed A-bomb victims to the register kept in the A-bomb Memorial Cenotaph. After City Council Chairman Hiroaki Hirano's address, flowers will be offered by roughly 100 persons, including Mayor Akiba, representatives of bereaved families, representatives of the survivors, and representatives of the residents of Hiroshima and Nagasaki.
At 8:15 am, the time the bomb exploded, representatives of the bereaved families and two children's representatives will ring the Peace Bell to start a minute of silence. Mayor Akiba will then read his Peace Declaration and two sixth graders will read their Commitment to Peace.
Mr. Baali, Algerian ambassador to the UN, will participate in the international symposium and lecture meeting sponsored by the city and other entities on August 4.
Since 1998, the city has invited each year
ambassadors to Japan of the seven nuclear
weapon states that have conducted nuclear
tests. At this point, the US and four other
countries have declined; no response has
been received from Russia or India.
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