Japan Press Weekly

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2012 August 1 - 14 [JCP]

Shii talks with UN High Representative for Disarmament Affairs

Japanese Communist Party Chair Shii Kazuo on August 6 held talks with Angela Kane, UN High Representative for Disarmament Affairs, in Hiroshima City.

Shii expressed his gratitude to the UN high representative for visiting Japan to attend the World Conference against A & H Bombs.

Kane in response said that UN Secretary General Ban Ki-moon who had visited Hiroshima two years ago had suggested for her to go to Japan, and expressed the UN desire to work closely with Hibakusha in regard to the abolition of nuclear weapons.

Shii said that he was very pleased to hear that 16 countries, including Norway and Switzerland, issued a joint statement at the Preparatory Committee for the 2015 NPT Review Conference in Vienna calling for a treaty banning nuclear weapons by arguing that the use of such weapons violates international humanitarian law.

“The main focus for the present Japanese nuclear weapons ban movement” is to have a clause calling for the start of negotiations for the Nuclear Weapons Convention (NWC) incorporated in the final statement of the 2015 NPT Review Conference, which the 2010 conference could not achieve.

Shii also said that he believes that the power of grassroots activism can defeat the specious logic of nuclear deterrence, the biggest obstacle in creating a nuclear-free world.

Kane also stressed the importance of continuing to encourage nuclear states to move ahead with such partial steps for nuclear disarmament as the NPT Review Conference, Comprehensive Nuclear Test Ban Treaty, and the Fissile Material Cut-off Treaty.