U.N. Chief Likely to Attend Peace Ceremony in Nagasaki

July 1, 2018

New York- U.N. Secretary-General Antonio Guterres plans to attend an annual peace memorial ceremony to be held in the atomic-bombed city of Nagasaki in August, Japan's U.N. Ambassador Koro Bessho said Friday.

If the plan is realized, Guterres will be the first U.N. chief to join the ceremony to mourn for victims of the U.S. atomic bombing of the southwestern Japan city on Aug. 9, 1945, and wish for peace.

Since taking office last year, Guterres has been working hard on disarmament and nuclear nonproliferation.

By attending the peace ceremony, he aims to show the international organization's determination to push forward the nuclear disarmament process, which has been stagnant for years, people familiar with the matter said.

At the signing ceremony in September last year for the U.N. Treaty on the Prohibition of Nuclear Weapons, Guterres said, "The heroic survivors of Hiroshima and Nagasaki--the Hibakusha--continue to remind us of the devastating humanitarian consequences of nuclear weapons."

In 2010, Ban Ki-moon became the first U.N. secretary-general to attend a peace memorial ceremony in Hiroshima, the western Japan city that was ruined by an atomic bomb three days earlier than Nagasaki. Jiji Press