G-7 FMs Push Nuclear Disarmament

G-7 FMs Push Nuclear Disarmament

HIROSHIMA, Japan (AP) -- Foreign ministers from the Group of Seven industrialized countries, meeting Monday in the atomic-bombed Japanese city of Hiroshima, called for a renewed push for flagging nuclear disarmament efforts as they wrestled with some of the intractable global problems facing their nations.

A joint communique condemned the usual suspects: recent extremist attacks from Turkey and Belgium to Nigeria, Ivory Coast and Pakistan; North Korea's nuclear test and missile launches; and Russia's "illegal annexation" of the Crimean peninsula in Ukraine.

The international community used to share common values that maintained stability and prosperity, Japanese Foreign Minister Fumio Kishida told a news conference.

"Today, the world is now facing challenges to change such common values and principles unilaterally, such as terrorism and violent extremism," he said.

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On terrorism, the top diplomats from the U.S., Japan, Britain, Canada, France, Germany and Italy pledged to complete a G-7 action plan that the leaders of their nations can adopt at their summit in Japan's Ise-Shima region in late May.

A separate statement took aim at China's land reclamation in the South China Sea, where it is enmeshed in a series of overlapping territorial disputes with Southeast Asian nations.

"We express our strong opposition to any intimidating, coercive or provocative unilateral actions that could alter the status quo and increase tensions," the statement said, without mentioning China by name.

It also expressed concern about the situation in the East China Sea, where Japan and China both claim some uninhabited islands.

Japan gave the issue of nuclear nonproliferation added significance by making Hiroshima the venue for the two-day foreign ministers meeting.

Secretary of State John Kerry became the highest-ranking American official to visit Hiroshima since World War II, and the foreign ministers jointly laid flowers for the victims of the U.S. atomic bombing in 1945.

They issued two statements on nonproliferation, including a "Hiroshima Declaration" that calls on other political leaders to visit Hiroshima too.

"In this historic meeting, we reaffirm our commitment to ... creating the conditions for a world without nuclear weapons," the declaration said.

The task is made more complex, it said, by the deteriorating security environment in countries such as Syria and Ukraine, as well as by North Korea's "repeated provocations."

The Hiroshima declaration aims to revitalize the effort to eliminate nuclear weapons, said Yasuhisa Kawamura, the Japanese Foreign Ministry press secretary.

(KA)

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