Some 25,000 people gathered for a memorial ceremony at the foot of the Statue of Peace -- a bronze figure pointing one arm to the sky from which the atomic bomb fell and another arm forward to a future without war.

Mayor Iccho Ito delivered the `Nagasaki Peace Declaration,' calling on the world to abandon the `outdated illusion' that possession of nuclear arms could restrain countries from going ahead with an annihilating war.

``Nuclear tension throughout the world has been exacerbated since May of last year, when both India and Pakistan conducted underground nuclear tests,'' he said.

``As was amply demonstrated by the hints of the possible use of nuclear weapons suggested during the NATO bombings of Yugoslavia, the world is indeed treading a perilous path. Even now, the nuclear weapon states remain wedded to theoutdated illusion of Nuclear deterrence,'' Ito said, urging world leaders to proclaim an abolition on nuclear arms by the end of the century.

Crowds, including some elderly survivors, at the peace memorial park, hospitals and churches offered a minute of silent prayer at 11.02 am, 54 years to the exact minute after a US bomber dropped a 4.5-tonne atomic bomb on Nagasaki.

The powerful plutonium-239 bomb named ``Fat Man'' killed more than 70,000 people in the city, which was home to Japan's naval industries.

The B-29 ``Bock's Car'' bomber, which left the US base on the Pacific island of Tinan in the early hours of the operation day, hastily released its bomb over Nagasaki as it was running out of gasoline.

The attack came three days after the US bomber ``Enola Gay'' dropped the first atomic bomb on Hiroshima. That explosion devastated the western Japanese city and left 140,000 dead by the end of 1945.