G7 leaders gather in Hiroshima for annual meeting

Kathmandu: An annual meeting of G7 countries representing the wealthiest industrialised nations is underway in the Japanese city of Hiroshima.

Japan is hosting the G7 summit from May 19 to May 21 in Hiroshima, the hometown of Prime Minister Fumio Kishida. Kishida has welcomed the G7 leaders from Canada, France, Germany, Italy, the United Kingdom, and the United States on Friday morning.

The visiting leaders and officials have paid respect to Hiroshima victims at the Hiroshima Peace Memorial Park laying a wreath to the thousands of people who were killed when the United States dropped an atomic bomb on the city in 1945.

They stood in front of the memorial built in 1952 – the ruined shell of the A Bomb Dome behind – and bowed their heads. Some 140,000 people were killed instantly when the bomb was dropped by the Enola Gay, but many more died afterwards because they couldn’t get the medical treatment they needed.

The explosion also created a massive fire that tore through the city, made up then mainly of wooden buildings, while others died months and years later from radiation poisoning.

This year, the G7 summit will center around Ukraine war, sanctions on Russia, climate change food security and nuclear disarmament.

A key topic on the G7 agenda is how to put more pressure on Russia to end its war in Ukraine. Western countries – and some other democracies including South Korea and Japan – have already imposed some of the toughest sanctions ever devised, but leaders in Hiroshima are expected to tighten the screws still further.

Some media reported that Ukrainian president Volodymyr Zelenskyy will attend summit in person. According to media outlets Bloomberg and The Financial Times, he will travel to Japan to attend the summit in person.

Zelenskyy’s physical attendance would be a surprise after the Japanese government last week told local media that the Ukrainian leader would only attend talks on Sunday online.