October 24, 2003	Friday	Sha’aban 27, 1424

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ISLAMABAD, Oct 23: The Council of World Mayors for Peace in a recent meeting held in Manchester, England, has adopted an emergency action plan to develop measures to eliminate nuclear weapons in the world. The council wants to make it obligatory for all nuclear powers to get rid of the weapons by the year 2020, Tadotoshi Akiba, Mayor of Hiroshima, said here on Wednesday.

He was speaking at a discussion session arranged by the Pakistan Council for Social Sciences, which was attended, among others, by Zarina Salamat, Senator Farhatullah Babar, poet Zia Jullundry, Quaid-i-Azam University academician Dr Tariq Rahman, author Mr Rizvi, Zafarullah Khan and two Indian peace activists — Nirmala Deshpanday and Babita Chaudhry.

Mr Akiba said a big rally had been planned in New York in the year 2005 to call for abolition of nuclear weapons.

The council has to work at different levels to develop a network of opinion centring on the Hibakasha philosophy that no one should go through the experience of another nuclear holocaust after Hiroshima and Nagasaki where 140,000 people perished.

“Peace education is vital for creating opinion against the dread of another nuclear holocaust. The idea has been successful at Japanese universities in Tuft, Washington universities in the US, Leeds University in the UK, the Institute of Social Sciences in France as well as in studies for undergraduate students in Berlin.”

The Hiroshima mayor said he held discussion in this regard with the authorities at the Quaid-i-Azam University who were very receptive to the idea of arranging similar courses here. “Such courses at the university level and in other institutions would engender respect for peace,” he added.

Zia Jullundry was requested on the occasion to read his famous Urdu poem, Petition, published in India along with a poem of Prime Minister Atal Bihari Vajpayee. In the poem, Satan supplicates God Almighty that when He is contemplating creating mankind a second time the species should also be given the power to annihilate the devil because the devil was not equal to cause the same level of destruction as had been caused by man.