INAUGURAL STATEMENT

Read the complete Inaugural Statement by clicking the adjacent link to the left.

We have joined together to support a nuclear weapons free world, believing that these weapons pose an existential threat to all nations and peoples. As a group of individuals who have held high executive or advisory positions across the Asia Pacific region – from South Asia to East Asia and Australasia – we will work to promote policies in our own region and beyond to effectively contain, diminish and eliminate nuclear weapons, and to create a security environment conducive to the achievement of those goals.

We have come together in Japan for our inaugural meeting because Hiroshima and Nagasaki remain indelible historical reminders of the horror of nuclear weapons, and the Fukushima disaster a shocking contemporary reminder of the mortal danger of uncontrolled exposure to nuclear radiation.

We believe that we have a particular responsibility to work for change in the Asia Pacific As the world’s economic, political and security centres of gravity shift inexorably here, our stake in a secure world order – and obligation to contribute with ideas, policy proposals and vision to that end – have grown commensurately. What happens in this region impacts every dimension of the global nuclear agenda. We have shown the way forward with nuclear weapons free zones in the Treaties of Raratonga and Bangkok, but also have – in South Asia and the Korean Peninsula – two of the world’s most acute areas of nuclear tension. The quest to eliminate nuclear weapons cannot succeed without the determined engagement of policymakers in the Asia Pacific region.

Released in Seoul, 12 December 2011