Undeterred by the city’s refusal to allow protesters to rally on Central Park’s Great Lawn last summer, vocal opponents of nuclear proliferation are trying again, this time joined by more than 100 mayors from cities around the world.

Permit applications for a rally May 1 were filed yesterday with the city’s Police and Parks departments by the event’s organizers, United for Peace and Justice, a national anti-war coalition, and Abolition 2000, an international nuclear disarmament campaign.

May 1 is the day before the month long Review Conference of the Nuclear Non-Proliferation Treaty begins at the United Nations. It also historically has been the date of grand parades in communist countries.

The two groups are working with Mayors for Peace, an organization that unites 640 mayors worldwide in protest of nuclear weapons. The coalition is calling for the complete abolition of nuclear weapons by 2020.

More than 1,000 invitations are to be sent, and organizers said they expect more than 100 mayors, including 60 from American cities, to attend the rally, led by the mayors of Hiroshima and Nagasaki, the Japanese cities bombed during World War II.

The campaign manager for Mayors for Peace, Aaron Tovish, said the campaign cannot succeed without the support of the citizenry, and “people coming in from all over the world to rally in the one place they really know and recognize.”

Although Mayor Bloomberg has declined to enroll in Mayors for Peace, organizers hope that at least he will not seek to prevent the rally from taking place in the park.

The national coordinator of United for Peace and Justice, Leslie Cagan, said the city mishandled the permit application for the rally planned during the Republican National Convention in August. She said she hopes that this time around, the city will “understand that the people of this city know Central Park belongs to us.”

Protesters are still angry about being denied access to the park in August. “The idea that an anti-war rally could be reduced to an issue of lawn care is just ridiculous,” said the media coordinator for United for Peace and Justice, Bill Dobbs.

That was an allusion to the Bloomberg administration’s contention that the huge crowds expected to protest during last summer’s Republican National Convention would have done untold damage to the grass in the park.

A Parks Department spokesman confirmed receipt of the paperwork yesterday and said the application will be carefully considered.

The growing threat of nuclear proliferation was one of the few issues that President Bush and Senator Kerry agreed on during the presidential debates this year. “If you look at coverage of Iraq and Iran and North Korea,” Mr. Dobbs said, “there is an enormous amount of concern over nuclear weapons. It’s there – it just needs to be raised up much higher as an issue.”

Of their goal of complete abolition by 2020, the organizations are cautiously optimistic. “We are not naive about this,” Ms. Cagan said. “We don’t think it will be easy or happen overnight. But we are completely committed to this as a core agenda.”

The Nuclear Non-Proliferation Treaty, established in 1970, is reviewed every five years. Next year is the 60th anniversary of the bombings of Hiroshima and Nagasaki, and the 35th anniversary of the treaty.