As usual the annual meetings, which follow those held in Hiroshima last week, will feature a number of workshops and events to promote peace and the abolition of nuclear weapons.

Foreign guests attending the conference hosted by the Japan Congress Against A-and H-Bombs (Gensuikin) include antiwar campaigner George Galloway, a Labour Party backbencher in Britain's House of Commons, and Stephen Schwartz, publisher of the Bulletin of the World Atomic Scientists.

With the season's 10th typhoon approaching the city, Galloway said in a speech at the opening event that, unlike typhoons and volcanoes, "What happened to Nagasaki 58 years ago was not an act of nature, it was a politically motivated war crime against humanity."

Meanwhile, foreign participants including Egyptian Ambassador to Japan Mahmoud Karem and Indonesian Embassy Councilor Syahri Sakidin also took part in the opening event of the Japan Council against A & H Bombs (Gensuikyo).

Gensuikin has connections mainly with the Democratic Party of Japan, the largest opposition party, the Social Democratic Party and the Japanese Trade Union Confederation (Rengo), while Gensuikyo has close ties with the Japanese Communist Party.

Antinuclear activists in Japan formerly worked together in Gensuikyo, when their first annual meeting was held in 1955.

In 1963, however, different views on the former Soviet Union's nuclear tests split the group, resulting in the launch of the Socialists-backed Gensuikin in 1965. Since then, the two have rarely acted together.