Tokyo: The Japanese city Nagasaki on Wednesday marked the 72nd anniversary of the US atomic bombing during World War II, with Mayor Tomihisa Taue insisting that Tokyo joins a treaty to ban nuclear weapons.
In his Peace Declaration at a ceremony in the Peace Park to commemorate the lives lost on August 9, 1945, Taue said the government's position on nuclear weapons was "incomprehensible", Xinhua news agency reported.
"The Japanese government's stance of not even participating in the diplomatic negotiations for the Nuclear Non-Proliferation Treaty is quite incomprehensible to those of us living in the cities that suffered atomic bombings," the Mayor said.
He implored Japan to join the treaty to prohibit nuclear weapons.
Taue said the government should "affirm to the world its commitment to the pacifist ethos of the Constitution of Japan, which firmly renounces war".
His remark comes at a time when Prime Minister Shinzo Abe and the ruling Liberal Democratic Party have been eyeing to make Japan's first-ever postwar amendment to the pacifist charter, a move that has proved politically, publicly and internationally decisive.
In a speech to mark the anniversary, Abe said that both nuclear and non-nuclear weapon states needed to work towards nuclear abolition.
Three days after the nuclear attack on Hiroshima on August 6, the US dropped a second bomb on Nagasaki. The twin attacks left more than 225,000 people dead in both the cities.