MEDIA STATEMENT:

Governments urged to act on Children's Day - nuclear weapons are not child's play.

MEDIA STATEMENT:

The International Campaign to Abolish Nuclear Weapons applauds Japan's announcement to host a major disarmament conference in 2010 and calls on Australia, as co-chair of the International Commission on Nuclear Non-proliferation Disarmament (ICNND), to actively promote and build on this initiative.

The international community must wake up to the threat of nuclear weapons proliferation, the Australian chairman of a new disarmament body says.

"The scale of the havoc and the devastation that can be wreaked by one major nuclear weapon alone puts 9/11 and almost everything else into the category of insignificance." - Gareth Evans.

ICAN partner Japanese for Peace held a screening in Melbourne of the new film White Light, Black Rain - The Destruction Of Hiroshima And Nagasaki, directed by Steven Okazaki.

ICAN supporters have descended on Melbourne's iconic Flinders Street station for a Japanese TV crew during a busy city afternoon.

With kangaroos, a Geisha, umbrellas and ICAN materials for the public, ICAN calls on Australia and Japan to get out from under the USA's "nuclear umbrella" if these nations are to remain serious about nuclear disarmament.

Commemorations around the globe were held August 6 and 9, marking the 63rd anniversaries of the atomic bombings of Hiroshima and Nagasaki respectively.

"... the only role for nuclear weapons is to be abolished."

- Hiroshima Mayor Tadatoshi Akiba, August 6, 2008.

The world stands at a turning point in regard to nuclear proliferation and nuclear disarmament.

Participate in a Japanese newspaper's survey about nuclear weapons.

Australian Prime Minister Kevin Rudd has announced plans for an International Commission on Nuclear Non-Proliferation and Disarmament, to be co-chaired by former Foreign Minister and now President of the International Crisis Group, Gareth Evans.

POINT OF VIEW/ Jayantha Dhanapala:

THE ASAHI SHIMBUN

The vision of a nuclear weapon-free world was most famously dismissed by the former Prime Minister of Britain, Margaret Thatcher, as a "pie in the sky." Such was the derision which greeted the disarmament scenario championed by governments, especially from the Non-aligned Movement, as well as non-government organisations such as Pugwash.

It is therefore a revolutionary change to see senior officials in former U.S. Administrations combine to write - not one but two - pieces in the conservative Wall Street Journal, calling for such pie in the sky.