TOKYO, Aug. 9 (Xinhua) -- During a ceremony to mark the 72nd anniversary of the U.S. atomic bombing, the mayor of Nagasaki Tomihisa Taue on Wednesday insisted that Japan join a treaty to ban nuclear weapons.

In his Peace Declaration delivered at an annual ceremony in the city's Peace Park to commemorate the lives lost on August 9, 1945, Taue said that the government's position on nuclear weapons is "incomprehensible."

"The Japanese government's stance of not even participating in the diplomatic negotiations for the Nuclear Prohibition Treaty is quite incomprehensible to those of us living in the cities that suffered atomic bombings," the mayor said at the Peace Park.

He implored Japan to join the treaty to prohibit nuclear weapons.

Taue also said the government of Japan should "affirm to the world its commitment to the pacifist ethos of the Constitution of Japan, which firmly renounces war."

His remark comes at a time when Prime Minister Shinzo Abe and the ruling Liberal Democratic Party (LDP) have been eyeing making Japan's first-ever postwar amendment to the pacifist charter, a move that has proved politically, publicly and internationally decisive.

In a speech made by Abe to mark the anniversary, he said that both nuclear weapon states and non-nuclear weapon states need to work towards nuclear abolition.

At 11:02 a.m. those attending the ceremony offered a moment's silence and prayers to the lives lost as a result of the nuclear attack.

It was three days after the nuclear attack on Hiroshima that the U.S. dropped a second bomb on Nagasaki.

Conservative estimates put the numbers of those killed and wounded as a result of the attack at 150,000 in Hiroshima and 75,000 in Nagasaki.