Ukrainian President Zelensky, who attended the G7 leaders’ summit in Hiroshima at the weekend, also visited the Memorial Park for the Victims of the American Nuclear Bomb with Japanese Prime Minister Kishida on Sunday.
Japan’s host of the G7 meeting, Prime Minister Kishida Fumio, is a politician for whom the tragedy of August 6, 1945, in Hiroshima is more personal than meets the eye. His family comes from Hiroshima, and among the tens of thousands of victims of the tragedy in Hiroshima, the first target of a nuclear attack in the history of mankind, there were also many members of his family. This August, it will be 78 years since the tragedy in Hiroshima and Nagasaki.
“Russia must not use nuclear weapons to threaten and intimidate,” the Japanese prime minister said after visiting the Memorial Park during Sunday’s bilateral meeting with the Ukrainian president.
A fire is burning in the Hiroshima Memorial Park, which will go out when the world is free of nuclear weapons. But there is still a long way to go and we are no closer to nuclear disarmament even after the Hiroshima summit.
A vision of nuclear disarmament
It was with the war in Ukraine that the world again came dangerously close to the possibility of using nuclear weapons, although analysts believe that the possibility that Russia, despite the intensified rhetoric we have witnessed since last February, would actually decide to use nuclear weapons is small. Russia has the largest number of nuclear warheads in the world. However, Russia is only one of nine countries in the world that have nuclear weapons, and eight countries recognize that they have such weapons. In addition to Russia, these are the United States of America, the United Kingdom, France, China, India, Pakistan and North Korea. Israel also has it unofficially, but that country has never publicly acknowledged or disclosed its nuclear weapons. 89 percent of the world’s nuclear weapons are in Russian and American hands, and France is the only nuclear power in the European Union after Brexit. With President Macron, France is also the loudest initiator of discussions on European security autonomy.
The leaders of the G7 group prepared a document on the vision of a world without nuclear weapons in Hiroshima on Saturday at the initiative of Japan. In a statement, the leaders of three nuclear-weapon states committed to a nuclear-weapon-free world with security for all. Among other things, the leaders condemned Russia’s plans to install nuclear weapons in Belarus and China’s nuclear plans. But Russia, which was invited to the developed club in 1998, has not been in the group since 2014, i.e. since the Russian annexation of Crimea, nor was China at the meeting. The document from Hiroshima is like that, and especially the letter on the paper and the fire in the Hiroshima Memorial Park, despite Japan’s efforts, the city, which is a symbol of the nuclear tragedy, is no less than it was before the start of the summit.
“The global rules on nuclear weapons are not the family rules of the G7 countries, which feel that they can command and dictate to other countries about nuclear weapons. China rejects baseless accusations by G7” the Chinese Foreign Ministry responded to the statement of the G7 leaders. That the decisions taken at the Hiroshima summit are an attempt to control Russia and China was the response of Russian Foreign Minister Lavrov.
The next G7 summit will be hosted by Italy. The 50th meeting of the group will take place in the first half of June in the south of Italy, most likely in Puglia.
Globus at 21:30 on TVSLO 1.
Source: Rtvslo
