Tokyo – Foreign ministers of the Group of Seven (G7) of top industrialised nations started two days of talks on terrorism, nuclear disarmament and maritime security in the western Japanese city of Hiroshima on Sunday.
The meeting was sequel to increasing tension over North Korea’s nuclear programme and China’s aggressive claim to nearly all of the South China Sea.
Japanese Foreign Minister, Fumio Kishida, said “I hope that a strong message of peace, stability and prosperity will be sent out to the world at the Hiroshima G-7 foreign ministers’ meeting.”
He expressed the hope that the meeting would be “an opportunity to send out a strong message toward a world without nuclear weapons as it is being held in Hiroshima, a city devastated by the U.S. atomic bombing of 1945.”
German Foreign Minister, Frank-Walter Steinmeier, missed Sunday’s events due to a delay in his arrival, Japan’s Foreign Ministry said.
The leaders of the G7 nations, made up of Britain, Canada, France, Germany, Italy, Japan and the United States, would also hold a meeting in late May in Mie prefecture, central Japan.
North Korea claimed on Saturday that it had carried out successful ground tests of a new engine for its intercontinental ballistic missiles, improving the range of its nuclear deterrent.
Also on Saturday, Paris terrorism suspect, Mohamed Abrini, confessed to being the fugitive third attacker at the Brussels airport last month, Belgian prosecutors said a day after his arrest.
Abrini was seized alongside five others as part of the investigation into the suicide attacks on March 22 at the airport and a Brussels underground station that killed 32 people. (dpa/NAN)
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