Anurag Kumar
The purpose of next year’s summit is to send a message of peace from Hiroshima, one of the two Japanese cities destroyed by nuclear weapons during World War II, as Russia has threatened to use nuclear weapons since invading Ukraine in late February.
G7 leaders will convene in Hiroshima for the first time. The group consists of three nuclear powers, namely the United Kingdom, France, and the United States, as well as Canada, Germany, Italy, Japan, and the European Union.
The announcement was made following the conclusion of this year’s G7 summit in the southern German castle resort of Schloss Elmau, where the Ukraine crisis dominated the discussion.
Kishida stated at a news conference, “I would like the summit to be a venue for leaders to demonstrate a strong commitment from Hiroshima to never repeating the horrors of nuclear weapons and opposing military aggressions.”
“At the upcoming summit, the G7 will demonstrate its leadership in establishing a new order based on universal values and rules,” he said.
According to a Japanese official, Kishida told his G7 counterparts that “there is no more fitting place than Hiroshima to commit to peace.”
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It will be the seventh G7 summit conducted in Japan, after the 2016 meeting in Mie Prefecture.
Kishida, a representative from Hiroshima elected to the House of Representatives for decades, advocates for a world without nuclear weapons. He expressed his intent to expedite G7 discussions toward this objective.
“The G7 reaffirms its commitment to the ultimate goal of a nuclear-free world with uncompromised security for all,” the group said in a communique issued following the conclusion of its three-day summit.
The leaders emphasized the significance of the Nuclear Non-Proliferation Treaty (NPT) as the “foundation” for nuclear disarmament and the peaceful use of nuclear technology.
Kishida intends to deliver a speech at a United Nations conference on nuclear nonproliferation to be held in New York in August.
At the previous review conference, convened in 2015 during Kishida’s tenure as foreign minister, a consensus document was not adopted due to disagreements among nuclear weapon states and others.
The first atomic bombing by the United States, which occurred on August 6, 1945, was responsible for an estimated 140,000 fatalities by the end of that year. Three days later, a second atomic bomb was detonated on Nagasaki.
During his May visit to Tokyo, U.S. President Joe Biden supported Japan’s selection of Hiroshima as the summit location.
