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TOKYO, October 15 (Xinhua) -- Japan on Thursday expressed concern over the US Senate's veto over the ratification of the Comprehensive Test Ban Treaty (CTBT) on nuclear weapons and urged Washington not to undermine the global efforts to prevent the spread of nuclear arms.
"We are very concerned about the immeasurable adverse effect on global nuclear disarmament and nonproliferation ...and are extremely disappointed with the situation given our expectations of the US leadership," Foreign Minister Yohei Kono said in a statement.
Kono said Japan "strongly urges the United States to promptly take measures not to undermine the credibility and significance of the CTBT, which was created by the international society through vast wisdom and energy."
Meanwhile, survivors of the 1945 atomic attacks on Hiroshima and Nagasaki denounced the US Senate's rejection of the pact.
"I'm angry that the Senate rejected the CTBT, a worldwide issue, only because of domestic political maneuvering," Kyodo News quoted Sunao Tsuboi, a senior member of the Hiroshima Prefectural Confederation of A-Bomb Suffers Organization, as saying.
Hitoshi Hamasaki, an A-bomb survivor and leader of a survivors' group in Nagasaki, was quoted as saying that the rejection could lead the United States to develop nuclear weapons further.
The Republican-controlled US Senate on Wednesday voted 51 to 48 to reject the ratification of the treaty. The rejection snubs an international conference in Vienna which last Friday issued a declaration urging the US and Russia to ratify the treaty as an example to other states that have signed but not yet ratified it.
The CTBT was adopted at the UN General Assembly on September 24, 1996. The treaty stipulates that all 44 declared and potential nuclear nations must ratify it for it to come into effect.