Arab News Japan

TOKYO: Japanese Prime Minister KISHIDA Fumio is scheduled to visit New York from July 31 through August 1 to attend the Tenth Review Conference of the Parties to the Treaty on the Non-Proliferation of Nuclear Weapons (NPT), where he will deliver a speech at the general debate. This will be the first time for a Japanese prime minister to attend an NPT Review Conference. 

With the division in the international community over ways to advance nuclear disarmament ever widening, as well as Russia’s threat of use of nuclear weapons in its war against Ukraine, the aim of a world without nuclear weapons is becoming harder to achieve.  

Japan believes it is important to make concrete and realizable efforts under the NPT for a world without nuclear weapons. 

Prime Minister Kishida is expected to reaffirm Japan’s position and the importance of the NPT. He is also expected to call for constructive contributions by the parties involved to maintain and strengthen the NPT’s aims.

Kishida is also expected to meet with UN Secretary General Antonio Guterres and attend a meeting of the Non-proliferation and Disarmament Initiative (NPDI).

Japan is the only country to have been attacked with nuclear weapons and is a neighbor to three countries with nuclear arms: Russia, China and North Korea.

Japan has the protection of the United States military under the U.S.-Japan Security Treaty and part of that protection unofficially includes nuclear weapons.