ISLAMABAD, Aug 6: Peace activists here on Friday expressed their revulsion against nuclear weapons and demanded removal of all kinds of destructive from the face of the earth.

They made this demand at a rally organized here to mark the terrible holocaust which shook the world conscience after the US dropped atom bombs on Hiroshima and Nagasaki 59 years ago.

The rally, organized under the aegis of Citizens' Peace Committee of Rawalpindi-Islamabad chapter, was participated by writers, scholars, intellectuals, children and civil society members.

The children also raised slogans in favour of better understanding between Pakistan and India so that a momentum for peace should spread throughout the region in which they wanted to live peacefully.

Earlier speaking at a seminar on "From Hiroshima to Chaghi", organized by the CPC, Afrasiyab Khan Khattak, former chairman of Human Rights Commission of Pakistan and central leader of Awami National Party emphasized the need for a movement against nuclear weapons and for attainment of world peace in South Asian region.

Pakistan and India detonated nuclear bombs in May 1998. The danger had receded from European theatre and it has now reached the South Asian region; our people lived in dread that a conflict might ensue between Pakistan and India which would expand into atomic warfare and this would annihilate every one, he said.

It was necessary in his opinion that strong voices from the civil society of these two countries must cry out for banning nuclear weapons and halt their manufacture.

"Nuclear weapons had never done any good to any body, and their possession did not minimize but increased threats to security", reminding every one concerned that the large number of nuclear devices did not stop the fragmentation of the Soviet Union; the detonation of devices at Pokhran and Chaghi did not stopped the war at Kargil, nor the smuggling and proliferation of centrifuges," Mr Khattak said.

He added the two neighbourly countries must devote their attention and resources on meeting the basic necessities of the people and not on stockpiling and collecting dangerous armaments.

The veteran politician and human rights activist maintained that "the neglect of people's wishes has taken us near a break up but the veil of secrecy keep people from knowing facts", referring to Hamudur Rahman Commission Report which looked into the causes of the dismemberment of the former East Pakistan which never saw the light of the day in this country.

"In the same way we did not know the causes which led to the Kargil fiasco though in India two enquiries have been made on this subject." In his speech Senator Sanaullah Baloch referred to the Chaghi explosion and said as a result the beautiful countryside of Raskoh mountain had been devastated.

He claimed that nearly 3000 old men, women and children have died due to diseases caused as an after effect of the explosion. He added that though the effect in Chaghi could have been less in intense, it was the same as the Hiroshima. It might be that Balochistan had been subject to draught since 1998.

The young Baloch senator said 62 per cent of the Balochistan population remained without drinking water, 30 per cent of children could not go to school, and 65 per cent people suffered from the deadly disease of hepatitis.

Senator Baloch appealed to the civil society to join him in demanding the two governments to desist in accretion of military might and instead money should be spent on human resource as well as social development. The seminar through a resolution, read out by renowned poet and CPC chairperson Kishwar Naheed demanded of the government not to send Pakistani troops to Iraq.