This supplied photo shows Hannover Mayor Belit Onay. (Photo courtesy of LHH/S. Wolters/Kyodo)

       VIENNA (Kyodo) -- Municipal leaders from some European countries including Britain, France and Germany plan to hold a meeting in support of banning nuclear weapons in March in Vienna, the mayor of Hannover has said.

       It will be timed with the first meeting of signatories to a U.N. treaty banning nuclear arms in the Austrian capital from March 22 to 24, Belit Onay, the mayor of the German city, said in an online interview with Kyodo News on Sunday.

       Onay said the mayoral meeting is aimed at encouraging European countries to join the Treaty on the Prohibition of Nuclear Weapons, which entered into force in January this year, adding he hopes the heads of Hiroshima and Nagasaki, and survivors of the U.S. atomic bombings of the two Japanese cities in 1945, will join the event.

       "They will be able to report and document about their experiences," he said. "The voices of the survivors should serve as a reminder."

       Officials in the two cities in Japan, the only country in the world to have suffered the devastation of atomic bombings, welcomed the idea of organizing such a meeting and voiced hope to be part of the event if possible.

       Hannover is a sister city to Hiroshima and one of the vice presidents in Mayors for Peace, a nongovernmental organization composed of over 8,000 cities in 165 countries and regions.

       Touching on the scrapping of the Intermediate-Range Nuclear Forces Treaty, a 1987 key arms control pact between the United States and Russia, Onay said, "Fatal military and warlike consequences cannot be ruled out anymore, especially for Europe."

       "At the same time, the potential for armed conflict is also increasing dramatically," he said as nuclear disarmament efforts are "not working or not really taking effect."

       The new U.N. treaty completely outlaws the development, testing, possession and use of nuclear weapons. But it only binds states that have formally signed and ratified it.

       More than 50 countries, including Austria, Malaysia, New Zealand and South Africa, have ratified the accord. But nuclear weapon states, including Britain, China, France, Russia and the United States, are not signatories.

       Japan and Germany, in consideration of their alliances with the United States, have also refrained from signing the treaty.

       Font Size S M L Print Timeline 0