Demonstrators held placards and flags pushing for nuclear disarmament (Shannon Stapleton/Reuters) Demonstrators form a human peace sign in New York's Central Park, Sunday, May 1, 2005. Invoking memories of the bombs dropped on Hiroshima and Nagasaki decades ago, anti-nuclear weapon and anti-war activists on Sunday marched past the United Nations, where a conference to reassess the Nuclear Nonproliferation Treaty was scheduled to begin this week through mid town to a rally in Central Park. (AP Photo/Mary Altaffer)

NEW YORK - A coalition of groups opposed to nuclear weapons marched in New York today, just before talks start at the United Nations to review the Nuclear Nonproliferation Treaty. Marching bands played, and demonstrators held placards and flags pushing for nuclear disarmament and rallying against war as they made their way toward Central Park.

The protest by United for Peace and Justice, an antiwar group, and Abolition Now, which advocates the elimination of nuclear weapons, have said they expected up to 60,000 people to participate, including the mayors of the Japanese cities of Hiroshima and Nagasaki, where the United States dropped atomic bombs in 1945 in the final days of World War II, killing and wounding hundreds of thousands of people.

Marching along with the mayors from the two Japanese cities were survivors of the bombings. The march started at midday and made its way up First Avenue in Manhattan before heading west.

"Shut down everything - testing, nuclear weapons, the war," said Vickie Downie, of Teseque, N.M., who came with a group calling for the closing of the beleaguered Los Alamos National Laboratory, the country's largest nuclear weapons lab, according to The Associated Press.

A statement on the Web site of United for Peace and Justice said, "We need to be out in the streets sending a loud and clear message to decision-makers and the public at large: End the war in Iraq!"

It said war veterans and military families also planned to join the march and rally.

Bob Schumacher, a Vietnam War veteran from Montrose, Penn., said the public was being fed lies, as it was in the Vietnam era, The A.P. said .

"I made a promise to people I knew who died there that I wouldn't stand by and let another war happen and not speak out," he said.

The protest is timed to coincide with the Nuclear Nonproliferation Treaty conference that starts on Monday when representatives of 189 countries gather at the United Nations. The conference is meant to offer hope of closing large loopholes in the treaty that the United States says Iran and North Korea have exploited to pursue nuclear weapons.

Iran threatened on Saturday to resume producing nuclear fuel, and North Korea dismissed President Bush as a "philistine whom we can never deal with."

Kirk Semple contributed reporting for this article.

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