Prime minister Kishida’s attendance at NPT review conference is officially announced: He would make a plea for nuclear disarmament.
Jun. 22, 2022
by Junya Kuchimoto, Staff Writer
On June 21, the Japanese government formally announced that Prime Minister Fumio Kishida representing Hiroshima Prefecture’s District No.1, will attend the Nuclear Non-Proliferation Treaty (NPT) Review Conference to take place at the United Nations (U.N.) headquarters in New York in August. Mr. Kishida will be the first sitting Japanese prime minister to attend the conference. In order to realize a world without nuclear weapons, which he has declared as his life’s work as a politician elected in the A-bombed city, he is expected to encourage the nuclear-armed nations to implement nuclear disarmament efforts to which they are obliged in NPT.
Chief cabinet secretary, Hirokazu Matsuno, reported Mr. Kishida’s attendance at the press conference. Regarding NPT, Mr. Matsuno stressed it was a cornerstone for an international framework of nuclear disarmament and non-proliferation. He then added the government would do its utmost in efforts to yield meaningful results through Mr. Kishida’s direct participation. He also discussed how the prime minister’s detailed schedule for attending the conference would be coordinated.
According to the government official, the most probable scenario is that the prime minister will deliver a speech during the general debate on August 1, the opening day of the conference in which representatives from each nation would express their stances. It is assumed Mr. Kishita will exhibit a sense of crisis that the NPT framework is shaken because Russia, one of the NPT member nations, has continued to threaten Ukraine with use of nuclear weapons. He is also expected to urge the five nuclear superpowers, the U.S., China, Russia, the U.K. and France, to reduce the number of nuclear warheads and assure information transparency about their nuclear possessions.
The NPT review conference is a forum in which both the nuclear states and the non-nuclear states seek a path toward nuclear disarmament. Typically, cabinet-level politicians or representatives from the governmental agencies attend the conference. When the last conference was held in 2015, Mr. Kishida, then the foreign minister, attended. The final document wasn’t adopted in the last conference as negotiations couldn’t reach a consensus against a backdrop of the nuclear development in Iran and other issues.
(Originally published by June 22, 2022)
On June 21, the Japanese government formally announced that Prime Minister Fumio Kishida representing Hiroshima Prefecture’s District No.1, will attend the Nuclear Non-Proliferation Treaty (NPT) Review Conference to take place at the United Nations (U.N.) headquarters in New York in August. Mr. Kishida will be the first sitting Japanese prime minister to attend the conference. In order to realize a world without nuclear weapons, which he has declared as his life’s work as a politician elected in the A-bombed city, he is expected to encourage the nuclear-armed nations to implement nuclear disarmament efforts to which they are obliged in NPT.
Chief cabinet secretary, Hirokazu Matsuno, reported Mr. Kishida’s attendance at the press conference. Regarding NPT, Mr. Matsuno stressed it was a cornerstone for an international framework of nuclear disarmament and non-proliferation. He then added the government would do its utmost in efforts to yield meaningful results through Mr. Kishida’s direct participation. He also discussed how the prime minister’s detailed schedule for attending the conference would be coordinated.
According to the government official, the most probable scenario is that the prime minister will deliver a speech during the general debate on August 1, the opening day of the conference in which representatives from each nation would express their stances. It is assumed Mr. Kishita will exhibit a sense of crisis that the NPT framework is shaken because Russia, one of the NPT member nations, has continued to threaten Ukraine with use of nuclear weapons. He is also expected to urge the five nuclear superpowers, the U.S., China, Russia, the U.K. and France, to reduce the number of nuclear warheads and assure information transparency about their nuclear possessions.
The NPT review conference is a forum in which both the nuclear states and the non-nuclear states seek a path toward nuclear disarmament. Typically, cabinet-level politicians or representatives from the governmental agencies attend the conference. When the last conference was held in 2015, Mr. Kishida, then the foreign minister, attended. The final document wasn’t adopted in the last conference as negotiations couldn’t reach a consensus against a backdrop of the nuclear development in Iran and other issues.
(Originally published by June 22, 2022)
