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Australia is to lead the way on kick-starting the faltering nuclear disarmament process, with former foreign minister Gareth Evans to co-chair an international commission.

Prime Minister Kevin Rudd announced his plan to establish an international commission on nuclear non-proliferation and disarmament after an emotional visit to the Japanese city of Hiroshima.

Japan, the only country to have come under nuclear attack, will be asked to take part, as will other nations, Mr Rudd told students at Kyoto University.

"It's impossible to visit Hiroshima and not be moved by what you see," Mr Rudd told reporters after his speech.

"It is a graphic human story of the horrendous impact of nuclear weapons."

The bomb that flattened Hiroshima on August 6, 1945, killing 140,000 people, was a single 15 kilotonne bomb.

"Across the world today we have some 10,000 nuclear warheads currently in operation and some 20,000 in storage - many, and probably most, of greater capacity than that bomb which took out Hiroshima all those years ago," Mr Rudd said.

The commission will examine the work of two similar earlier panels, the Australian-led Canberra Commission and Japan's Tokyo Forum, to develop a plan of action for the next nuclear Non-Proliferation Treaty (NPT) review conference in 2010.

Its first task will be to report to a major international conference of experts in Australia late next year.

Mr Rudd will discuss the question of who should co-chair the commission alongside Mr Evans with Japanese Prime Minister Yasuo Fukuda in Tokyo on Thursday.

Mr Rudd said the NPT was under great pressure with some countries developing nuclear weapons outside its framework and others like North Korea defying the international community and leaving the treaty altogether.

"There are two courses of action available to the community of nations - to allow the NPT to continue to fragment, or to exert every global effort to restore and defend the treaty," he said.

The focus on the danger of nuclear weapons had dropped off since the end of the Cold War between the Soviet Union and the United States and stockpiles dwindled from their peaks in the late 1980s, he said.

Russia and the US had negotiated treaties to cut the number of weapons while South Africa and Ukraine had shown it was possible for nuclear states to disarm.

"We no longer live with the daily fear of nuclear war between the superpowers. But nuclear weapons remain," he told the students.

"New states continue to seek to acquire them. Some states, including states in our own region, are expanding their existing capacity.

"Hiroshima reminds us of the terrible power of these weapons ... Hiroshima should remind us that we must be vigilant afresh to stop their continued proliferation."


AAP

[JohnCenaFan28]

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