U.N. Secretary General Antonio Guterres will travel to Nagasaki to attend the annual commemoration of the atomic bombing of the southwestern Japan city, the United Nations said Tuesday.

It will be the first time for a U.N. secretary general to attend the Aug. 9 anniversary. During his Aug. 7-9 trip to Japan, Guterres will meet with Japanese Prime Minister Shinzo Abe, Nagasaki Mayor Tomihisa Taue and survivors of the atomic bombing.

"He is also going to Nagasaki as the first secretary general of the United Nations...to attend the ceremony to pay his respects to the victims," said Eri Kaneko, Guterres' associate spokeswoman.

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In addition to visiting the Nagasaki Atomic Bomb Museum, he will also meet with survivors from both the Nagasaki and Hiroshima bombings as well as local officials "to discuss their experiences and their ideas for how to promote nuclear disarmament," she added.

In 2010, Guterres' predecessor Ban Ki Moon became the first U.N. chief to attend the Aug. 6 event marking the Hiroshima atomic bombing. At the time, Ban also traveled to Nagasaki to lay a wreath at the memorial site ahead of the actual ceremony.

Nagasaki was the second city to be targeted in 1945, only three days after Hiroshima in western Japan. The atomic bombings took place late in World War II and heralded the start of the nuclear age.

Due to his tight schedule, Guterres will not include Hiroshima on his itinerary this time.

Guterres' visit to Nagasaki for the 73rd anniversary of the bombing comes on the heels of his disarmament agenda, released in May in Geneva, in which he said scrapping nuclear, chemical and biological weapons could "save humanity."

He warned that some 15,000 nuclear weapons remain stockpiled around the world, with hundreds of them prepared for launch at a moment's notice.

"The existential threat that nuclear weapons pose to humanity must motivate us to accomplish new and decisive action leading to their total elimination," he said in the foreword of the document, called "Securing Our Common Future."

"We owe this to the Hibakusha -- the survivors of nuclear war -- and to our planet," he said, using the Japanese name for the victims of the nuclear bombs.

The visit will also come a little more than a year after the Treaty on the Prohibition of Nuclear Weapons was adopted on July 7, 2017.

The nuclear ban treaty was passed with support from 122 U.N. members, but without backing from any of the major nuclear powers that constitute the five permanent members of the U.N. Security Council -- Britain, China, France, Russia and the United States.

"He will speak with the prime minister on a range of topics, not just disarmament, but other issues of mutual concern" including North Korea, explained Kaneko when asked about the subjects Guterres and Abe will discuss.