By Tomoyuki Tachikawa,
Japanese Prime Minister Fumio Kishida pledged Thursday to pave the way for achieving his cherished goal of a world without nuclear weapons at the Group of Seven summit in Hiroshima, a day before it opens in the western city devastated by a U.S. atomic bomb in 1945.
Earlier in the day, Kishida arrived in Hiroshima, with stringent security in place, to host the first G-7 summit in Japan in seven years, following the one held in the Ise-Shima area of Mie Prefecture, central Japan, under then Prime Minister Shinzo Abe.
During the three-day summit from Friday, Kishida, who represents Hiroshima as a lawmaker, and other G-7 leaders are likely to confirm the importance of making sure nuclear weapons will never be used again, amid Russia's threat to utilize such arms against Ukraine.
In the face of the war in Ukraine and China's military assertiveness in the Asia-Pacific region, Kishida and the leaders from Britain, Canada, France, Germany, Italy and the United States plus the European Union are also expected to show their resolve to uphold a rules-based international order.
The Japanese government said Ukrainian President Volodymyr Zelenskyy will participate in the G-7 summit online on Sunday.
Other key topics at the meeting are economic security and generative artificial intelligence technology that can utilize vast amounts of data from the internet and other sources to generate text, images, or other media in a human-like way.
The G-7 leaders may agree that their countries will formulate the group's view on generative AI applications such as ChatGPT by the end of this year, a Japanese government source said.
On Thursday, Kishida met with U.S. President Joe Biden and told him at the outset of their talks that he would like to show the G-7's "unwavering" determination to tackle global and regional challenges at the upcoming summit.
In the run-up to the gathering, Kishida also met with British Prime Minister Rishi Sunak and Italian Prime Minister Giorgia Meloni the same day, aiming to finalize the details of the conclusions that the G-7 leaders will hammer out.
Before leaving for Hiroshima, Kishida told reporters at his office in Tokyo, "I would like to demonstrate our commitment to peace in Hiroshima. I hope this summit will be etched in history."
At the summit, Kishida is expected to emphasize the necessity of a "free and open Indo-Pacific," a Japan-led initiative designed to curb China, and to promise to enhance engagement with developing nations called the "Global South."
On the opening day of the gathering, Kishida is set to welcome the G-7 leaders at the Peace Memorial Park, built in memory of the victims of the first nuclear attack in history on Aug. 6, 1945, nine days before Japan surrendered in World War II.
It would be the first time for the heads of the G-7 industrialized economies, three of which -- the United States, Britain and France -- are nuclear powers, to visit the park together.
Biden became the second U.S. sitting leader after Barack Obama to visit Hiroshima. He has no plans to issue an apology on behalf of the United States for the use of an atomic bomb on Hiroshima during his trip to the city, according to his National Security Adviser Jake Sullivan.
At the Hiroshima summit, the G-7 leaders are scheduled to discuss ways to advance nuclear disarmament at a session on Friday and release an outcome document vowing to bolster the regime established by the Nuclear Non-Proliferation Treaty, the source said.
On Thursday, G-7 leaders, with the exception of French President Emmanuel Macron, arrived in Hiroshima in the rain. Macron is due to arrive in Hiroshima on Friday.
The G-7 gathering comes around one month after an explosive device was thrown at Kishida just before he was due to make an election campaign speech in the western Japan city of Wakayama.
The attack came less than a year after Abe was fatally shot in July 2022 during a stump speech in the city of Nara, about 90 kilometers north of Wakayama, an incident that prompted the National Police Agency to beef up its VIP security.
Up to 24,000 security personnel have been mobilized for the Hiroshima summit, the police said, far more than the 5,600 mobilized for Obama's brief visit in May 2016.
