(CNN) -- U.N. Secretary-General Ban Ki-moon used an appearance at the Hiroshima Peace Memorial ceremony in Japan to advocate for his five-point plan for worldwide nuclear disarmament and nonproliferation.
August 6 marks the 65th anniversary of the atomic bomb dropped by the United States at the end of World War II on Hiroshima. Another was dropped a few days later on Nagasaki. The bombs devastated both cities and killed more than 200,000 people. Thursday was the first time a U.N. secretary-general took part in the ceremony.
"Together, we are on a journey from ground zero to global zero -- a world free of weapons of mass destruction," Ban said. "That is the only sane path to a safer world. For as long as nuclear weapons exist, we will live under a nuclear shadow".
This is Ban's first visit to Hiroshima. He also made the first visit of a U.N. secretary-general to Nagasaki when he participated in a wreath-laying ceremony on August 5.
Ban called for his plan for nuclear nonproliferation and disarmament to be acted upon. "It includes recommendations on security, verification, transparency, conventional weapons and the legal framework for nuclear disarmament," he said before laying the wreath in Nagasaki. CNN
