Nobel Peace winners issue declaration

TOKYO, May 17 (UPI) -- In a joint declaration published in a Japanese newspaper Monday, 17 Nobel Peace laureates called for a nuclear weapons-free world.

The declaration, carried in the Chugoku Shimbun newspaper in the atomic-bombed city of Hiroshima, was signed among others by Northern Ireland peace activist Mairead Corrigan Maguire, International Atomic Energy Agency head Mohammed ElBaradei, and anti-land mine campaigner Jody Williams of the United States, Kyodo news agency reported.

Their call comes in the wake of a similar call by U.S. President Barack Obama to rid the world of nuclear arsenals.

"The Hiroshima-Nagasaki Declaration of Nobel Peace laureates" asked people around the world to urge their leaders to work toward the abolition of nuclear weapons ahead of a 2010 conference on nonproliferation, the report said.

It said that for the first time in many years "the opportunity exists for genuine movement toward reducing and eliminating nuclear arms."

"We can either put an end to proliferation, and set a course toward abolition; or wait for the horrors of Hiroshima and Nagasaki to be repeated,'' the Nobel Peace winners said.