Mr. FUKUDA Yasuo
Prime Minister of Japan

Request to the Japanese Government
on the Occasion of Convening the G8 Toyako Summit

April 9, 2008
Japan Council against Atomic and Hydrogen Bombs

The Japanese government is scheduled to host the Annual Summit Meeting of the G8 Countries in July at Toyako, Hokkaido, with the four themes: �gEnvironment and climate change�h, �gDevelopment and Africa�h, �gWorld economy�h and �gOther political issues, including non-proliferation�h.

These fields are all related to the critical problems that the human community is facing.  We request that the Japanese government, as the host of the Conference, take initiatives to achieve fundamental solutions to these imminent challenges.

We are especially concerned about the current situation involving nuclear weapons.

As is commonly known, in the NPT Review Conference of May 2000, on the eve of the 21st century, the five Nuclear Weapons States accepted the �gunequivocal undertaking�h to �gaccomplish the total elimination of their nuclear arsenals�h, pressed by the world public opinion.  The United Nations Millennium Summit of September the same year also unanimously confirmed this task, which was incorporated in the Millennium Declaration.

Despite the lapse of nearly 8 years since then, the world is still loaded with 26,000 nuclear weapons stockpiled or deployed, and the �gundertaking�h to eliminate nuclear weapons has never been fulfilled.  A certain nuclear power continues to refuse the effort to negotiate or reach agreement for nuclear disarmament and abolition, by describing the danger of nuclear weapons as �gdanger of proliferation�h only.

To our disappointment, the past G8 Summit Conferences have continued to narrow down the framework of agreement on �gnon-proliferation�h, despite the agreement on the abolition reached at the NPT and UN conferences.  This time again, the G8 Summit takes up the question of �gproliferation�h only. 
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If those countries actually having vast number of nuclear weapons continue to ignore their own possession or deployment of nuclear weapons and try to legitimize them, the elimination of nuclear weapons can never be achieved.  Worse, such attitudes will completely undermine any moral foundation of the effort to prevent the danger of �gproliferation�h by other countries to develop nuclear weapons.

Two years from now in spring 2010, the NPT Review Conference is to be convened again, where the fulfillment of the �gundertaking�h will be questioned.  Towards this conference, overwhelming majority of the people of the world are calling on the nuclear powers to make a world without nuclear weapons a common goal, and take action for this.  The call is joined not only by the traditional abolition advocate governments of the New Agenda Coalition and the Non-Aligned Movement, but by a growing number of others, including former U.S. State and Defense Secretaries and ministries of the NATO countries.   

So that the forthcoming Summit Meeting will yield significant outcome, we urge the government of Japan, as the host and the only A-bombed nation, to propose the �gabolition of nuclear weapons�h to be included in the agenda of the Summit and relevant ministerial meetings, and to set out a specific process to achieve the abolition of nuclear weapons, including the commencement of negotiations to this end toward the year 2010.  We further request that the Japanese government take this opportunity to widely inform the international community of the atrocity of nuclear weapons by giving the representatives of the Hibakusha (A-Bomb victims) opportunities to speak in the conference, and setting up the A-Bomb photo exhibition in parallel will the conference programs.