THE anti nuclear campaign, Abolition 2000, was launched yesterday in Ireland. The worldwide petition by the Campaign for Nuclear Disarmament calls on the UN to produce a treaty scraping nuclear weapons by the end of the century.
The first Irish signatory was the Lord Mayor of Dublin, Mr Brendan Lynch. He was at the commemoration in Merrion Square Park to mark the 51st anniversary of the dropping of the first atomic bomb, Little Boy, on the Japanese city of Hiroshima.
Mr Lynch told the gathering of about 50 people that despite all the efforts to reduce nuclear armaments there still remained "enough nuclear weapons in the world to kill all its inhabitants many times over".
The Japanese ambassador to Ireland, Mr Takanori Kazuhara, did not sign the petition but said he was at the ceremony to thank. Irish people for sharing the sentiments of Japanese people as they commemorated the victims of the bombs in Hiroshima and three days later in Nagasaki.
The ambassador quoted a speech by his foreign minister, Mr Yukihiko Ikeda, at a UN conference on disarmament. "With the 21st century near at hand we have before us a historic opportunity to promote global disarmament and thus to create a safer world. Yet a peaceful world cannot be realised only by disarmament. There must also be greater trust among all countries."
Afterwards, he said. "Our position of security is a little different from Ireland. We're not neutral but in alliance with the US. We still have communists although in Europe the Cold War is over." Japan's policy was step by step to international disarmament. If nuclear weapons were abolished all at once there would be no deterrent, he said. "But we share fully the belief that they must be abolished in the long run.
The president of CND Ireland Dr John De Courcy Ireland, said he hoped "it will sink in that unless the people of the world get up and do something then these weapons will remain with us". He was trenchant in his criticism of big governments, whom he said used nuclear weapons to "show might is right. But it is not". He described the bombs in Japan's one of the cruelest events this century and warned that the weapons would be used if public opinion did not speak out.
Among those at the ceremony were the Minister for Social Welfare, Mr De Rossa, who signed the petition, as did the Labour TD, Mr Joe Costello. Other guests included a Green party MEP, Ms Patricia McKenna, and TD, Mr Trevor Sargent, as well as an international group who were "walking for peace in Ireland". Their members included two Japanese buddhist nuns, Sister Astrid and Sister Yuko, who sang a buddhist chant.
Afterwards, Jamie (7) and Joe (6) Comerford laid a carnation wreath at the cherry tree in the park which was planted by CND in 1980 to commemorate the victims of atomic weapons.
