(Adnkronos) – Warfare that deploys nuclear weapons “is a crime against humanity”, Italy’s president Sergio Mattarella wrote on the 80th anniversary of the United States’ bombing of the Japanese city of Hiroshima at the end of World War II.
“Today, in a global scenario marked by wars, growing tensions and conflicts, it must be strongly underlined that the use or even the threat of introducing nuclear weapons into armed conflicts can only be considered a crime against humanity,” Mattarella wrote in a statement.
“The global architecture of disarmament and non-proliferation of nuclear weapons, one of the cornerstones of the multilateral system painstakingly built after the Second World War, cannot be jettisoned, with the risk of further escalating hostilities,” the statement continued.
“Fifty years after the ratification of the Non-Proliferation Treaty (NPT), Italy reiterates its goal of a world free of nuclear weapons and the boosting to maximum strength of the international watchdogs created for this purpose,” the statement added.
The uranium bomb dropped on Hiroshima on 6 August 1945 and the plutonium bomb unleashed by the US on the Japanese city of Nagasaki three days later were “apocalyptic experiences” that “sowed death and destruction on a previously unknown scale” and which represent “an unforgettable warning for humanity,” Mattarella wrote.
