Japan, U.S. agree to work toward successful G7 Hiroshima summit
TOKYO – Japanese Prime Minister Fumio Kishida confirmed Tuesday with U.S. Secretary of State Antony Blinken that their countries will work together to realize a successful Group of Seven summit in Hiroshima next month.
Kishida has recently met with senior U.S. officials visiting Japan in succession to boost the momentum toward the G7 summit, slated to be held in his home constituency of Hiroshima, a city that was devastated by a U.S. atomic bomb in August 1945.
Blinken visited the prime minister’s office in Tokyo after concluding the three-day G7 foreign ministerial gathering in the resort town of Karuizawa, central Japan, around a month before the main summit.
At the outset of the meeting, which was open to the media, Kishida said Japan wants to work with the United States to maintain a “rules-based international order” — in an apparent reference to China’s growing regional military assertiveness and Russia’s invasion of Ukraine.
Calling the G7 a “critical steering committee for the leading democratic economies,” Blinken told Kishida that President Joe Biden is looking forward to “pursuing” the agenda set out by Japan at the three-day summit scheduled from May 19.
Kishida has expressed that he is eager to pitch his vision of a world free of nuclear weapons at the G7 summit in Hiroshima.
In Karuizawa, the G7 foreign ministers demonstrated their unity on Taiwan, while urging China, which regards the island as a renegade province to be reunified with the mainland, by force if necessary, to behave responsibly as a member of the international community.
The ministers from Britain, Canada, France, Germany, Italy, Japan and the United States, plus the European Union, also pledged to bolster economic sanctions on Russia and continue supporting Ukraine, which has been under attack by Moscow since February 2022.
© KYODO