A group of political, business and academic figures, including former Prime Minister Yasuhiro Nakasone, has launched a forum to push for the listing of Mount Fuji as a World Heritage site by the U.N. Educational, Scientific and Cultural Organization.
The group, which plans to hold its first general meeting on April 25 in Tokyo, hopes the mountain, Japan's highest at 3,776 meters, will be added to a list of World Heritage candidates in two or three years and gain registration in five years.
In 1992, residents and environment preservation groups established a body with the same goal and asked for the support of the government. But the government had not recommended Mount Fuji for the nature section of the World Heritage list because of the problem of pollution in the vicinity of the mountain.
The conical dormant volcano last erupted in 1707.