Nobel Peace Prize laureate Muhammad Yunus visited Hiroshima Peace Memorial Park on Tuesday and offered flowers at the cenotaph commemorating victims of the 1945 atomic bombing.
Yunus, a Bangladeshi economist who founded Grameen Bank, which provides small loans in poverty-stricken rural areas, vowed to work toward the abolition of nuclear weapons, saying nuclear attacks should never be repeated.
After visiting the Peace Memorial Museum, he met with the governor of Hiroshima Prefecture, Hidehiko Yuzaki, and Hiroshima Mayor Kazumi Matsui.
Yunus also delivered a speech at Hiroshima University to mark the publication in February of the Japanese translation of his new book "A World of Three Zeros." The book discusses measures to eliminate poverty, unemployment and net carbon emissions.
Yunus and the bank were jointly awarded the 2006 Nobel Peace Prize "for their efforts to create economic and social development from below."
The bank, established in 1983, has helped poor people by providing small loans without collateral, a method that has spread around the world as "microcredit."
