Invited guests, including the leadership of the African Union and the G20, will join the G7’s core rich country members in Hiroshima on Saturday, after a day in which the Group of Seven leaders agreed to tighten sanctions on Russia, and to reaffirm their commitment to a world without nuclear weapons.
But it is still unclear whether Ukraine’s president Volodimir Zelensky, who is scheduled to join the summit online on Sunday, will arrive in person in Hiroshima this weekend. Japan’s foreign ministry press secretary Hikariko Ono told journalists at a late night briefing on Friday that Ukraine had made it public on Friday that Zelensky would participate online. “There is nothing more I can add,” she said.
Her comments came after media reports that Zelensky had landed in Saudi Arabia en route to Japan, and that he would meet Indian Prime Minister Narendra Modi in Hiroshima.
Ukraine, and the prospect of a Zelensky visit, have tended to hog the headlines for a summit which Japan’s prime minister, Fumio Kishida, wanted to focus particularly on instability and security threats in the Indo-Pacific, where Japan is seeking a more co-ordinated response by G7 leaders against Chinese aggression in the region. Ono said the leaders discussed this candidly at their Friday evening dinner, including the instability in the important Taiwan Straits.
As this year’s G7 president, Japan has also made nuclear disarmament and non-proliferation a priority for the leaders, three of whose countries (the US, France and UK) still have nuclear weaponry. Though arsenals have been shrinking since the Cold War, SA is still the only country to have voluntarily implemented complete nuclear disarmament, as it did in the 1990s.
Kishida has made this a priority for his own presidency since he took office in 2021, launching his Hiroshima Action Plan in August. The G7 leaders on Friday took the relatively unusual step of releasing a separate statement, the Hiroshima Vision on Nuclear Disarmament, in which they affirmed their commitment to achieving a world without nuclear weapons, with undiminished security for all.
“We underscore the importance of the 77-year record of non-use of nuclear weapons. Russia’s irresponsible nuclear rhetoric, undermining of arms control regimes, and stated intent to deploy nuclear weapons in Belarus are dangerous and unacceptable…..we reiterate our position that threats by Russia of nuclear weapon use, let alone any use of nuclear weapons by Russia, in the context of its aggression against Ukraine are inadmissible.”
The leaders also released a separate statement on Ukraine, in which they again condemned Russia’s illegal aggression against the sovereign state of Ukraine as well as the impact it had had on the rest of the world. They outlined fresh sanctions and measures to close loopholes in existing ones. These included an embargo on Russian diamonds, and a commitment to improve tracing of such diamonds to prevent their proceeds being used to fund the war.
Engagement with the Global South is another priority for the summit. Japan invited eight countries to join talks from Saturday afternoon, and a string of planes flew in carrying their leaders on Friday, as well as the heads of seven international organisations who will join the core G7 at the summit.
Ono said issues to be taken up ‘candidly’ would include development, climate, health, energy and the economy.
SA was not invited, with Japan opting instead to invite Comoros as this year’s chair of the AU. Also on the guest list are Australia, Brazil, the Cook Islands (Pacific Islands Forum chair), India (G20 presidency), Indonesia (ASEAN chair), the Republic of Korea and Vietnam.
The international organisations are the United Nations, International Energy Agency, International Monetary Fund, Organisation for Economic Cooperation and Development, World Bank, World Health Organization, and World Trade Organisation.
In addition to the group meetings, G7 leaders have also had bilateral summits with Japan over the past two days, each of which has had its own particular focus.
Kishida has raised trade barrier concerns with some of his European counterparts at the meetings, which have also focused on the need to co-ordinate on issues such as cyber security and the global governance needed for artificial intelligence, as well as on the need for agreement on fair and open global trade.
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