Japanese Prime Minister Fumio Kishida will attend a U.N. conference on nuclear nonproliferation to be held in New York in August, the government said Tuesday.
Kishida would be the first Japanese prime minister to attend a review conference of the Treaty on the Non-Proliferation of Nuclear Weapons. He is expected to deliver a speech as early as Aug. 1, when the conference begins, according to a government source.
"Joined by both nuclear powers and non-nuclear states, the NPT is the foundation of the nuclear disarmament and nonproliferation regime," Chief Cabinet Secretary Hirokazu Matsuno told a press briefing in Tokyo.
"We will make all-out efforts toward ensuring that (the conference) produces a meaningful outcome with the participation of the prime minister himself," he added.
Elected from a constituency in Hiroshima that was devastated by a U.S. atomic bombing in 1945, Kishida is pushing for a world devoid of nuclear weapons. He was foreign minister in 2015 when the previous review conference ended without a consensus document due to disagreements.
The NPT, joined by about 190 countries, is the world's most widely ratified nuclear arms control agreement. Its review conferences involving both nuclear and non-nuclear states, as well as survivors of the atomic bombings and civic groups, had been held every five years from 1975 to 2015.
The forthcoming meeting, scheduled from Aug. 1 to 26, was initially due to take place in 2020 but was postponed because of the COVID-19 pandemic.
A separate conference of the signatory states of the Treaty on the Prohibition of Nuclear Weapons is scheduled from Tuesday to Thursday in Vienna.
Japan, which has not signed the treaty, has decided not to participate in the meeting as an observer despite calls from atomic bomb survivors.
As the only nation to have experienced atomic bombings, Japan will pursue a "realistic" approach and work toward realizing a nuclear-free world with the engagement of nuclear powers who are not part of the nuclear ban treaty, the top government spokesman said.
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