Japan to send ‘strong anti-nuclear message’ at Hiroshima G7 summit

Tokyo, Apr 4 (EFE).- Japan said Tuesday it seeks to send a message against nuclear weapons at the next G7 summit in Hiroshima, the first city in history to be attacked by an atomic bomb.

“The situation around nuclear disarmament is becoming more serious, but that is precisely why we must move forward. We must not stop,” Japanese Foreign Minister Yoshimasa Hayashi said in a recorded message during a meeting of experts to the nuclear disarmament that began Tuesday in Tokyo.

Hayashi, who is on an official trip to Brussels, said he hopes the summit – from May 19 to May 21 – “sends a strong message for a world free of nuclear weapons.”

The foreign minister spoke at the second forum of the “International Council of Eminent Persons,” a meeting of countries that possess and do not possess nuclear weapons to exchange ideas and perspectives “to achieve a world free of them.”

The forum, which will last two days, will have 13 experts from Japan, the United States, Russia and China, among others, especially in the field of academic research and will conclude Wednesday with a press conference on its conclusions.

Japanese Prime Minister Fumio Kishida said in January that one of the main issues on the G7 leaders meeting agenda (which also includes the US, Germany, Canada, Italy, France and the United Kingdom), will be to achieve a world without nuclear weapons and deal with the Ukraine War.

Hiroshima, where Kishida has roots, was the first ever city to be bombed with an atomic weapon by the US at the end of World War II.

Following the attack on Hiroshima on Aug. 6, 1945, US forces dropped another atomic bomb on Nagasaki, triggering Japan’s surrender and the end of the international conflict. It is estimated that the bombings killed more than 200,000 people. EFE

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