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Mayors for Peace: 40 new member cities in june
Press release Mayors for Peace
Ypres, June 30 2008 - The past four weeks and as of June 30th 2008, 40 new member cities have joined Mayors for Peace. The fast growing network now counts 2,317 member cities in 130 countries.
We welcome new members from Australia (1), Belgium (1), Bulgaria (1), Bosnia and Herzegovina (1), Haiti (2), Iraq (16), Israel (1), Italy (1), Japan (4), Spain (8), Switzerland (1) UK (2) and USA (1).
We welcome the first members in Haiti. This brings Mayors for Peace member cities' presence up to 130 countries and regions.
The invitation by Mr. Josep Mayoral, the Mayor of Granollers, and the call of the Catalan Association of Municipalities to join Mayors for Peace in its campaign to abolish nuclear weapons resulted in 8 new Spanish members. Further plans are being developed when on May 31st during the commemoration of the 70th anniversary of the bombing of Granollers the Mayors Josep Mayoral from Granollers and Josep Poblet i Tous from Vila-seca signed a cross-party appeal for Spanish Mayors to join and support the campaign. Here we also need to acknowledge the very important contribution by Greenpeace Spain who has been doing excellent work in informing Mayors of the important role of local governements in peace and security issues.
We also need to thank Mr. Khder Kareem, the Mayor of Halabja (Iraq) who has been able to bring another 16 new Iraqui Mayors on board in our common struggle to abolish weapons of mass destruction. Halabja was the scene of the perverse use of chemical weapons 20 years ago.
We hope this will be an encouragement for many of you to continue capacity building. In 2007 World Military expenditures raised up to 1,338 trillion US dollars. With Mayors for Peace it is clear that we are up to a huge and powerful military industrial complex. National governments are too often going along .
Mayors for Peace 2020 Vision Campaign vzw/asbl
International Secretariat
City Hall, Grote Markt 34, 8900 Ypres, BELGIUM
Website: www.2020visioncampaign.org
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