The Japanese city of Hiroshima hosts, from Friday (19) to Sunday (21), another G7 Summit – the seven richest economies in the world. Sanctions on Russia after the invasion of Ukraine, China’s ambitions towards Taiwan and nuclear disarmament will be up for debate. Japanese Prime Minister Fumio Kishida is expected to receive the leaders of the other six major industrialized democracies in the city marked by nuclear destruction in 1945 and which currently has several monuments to peace. The leaders of the countries in the group (United States of America, Japan, Germany, France, United Kingdom, Italy and Canada) will try to present a united front against Russia and China, but also on other strategic issues in which their interests are not always are perfectly aligned. The invasion of Ukraine, launched by Russia 15 months ago, will dominate the agenda, with “discussions on the situation on the ground”, revealed US Security Adviser Jake Sullivan. The United States and its allies have increased arms shipments to Ukraine. Ukrainian President Volodymyr Zelensky is expected to participate in the summit via videoconference. Talks are likely to focus on tightening sanctions on Moscow, which have already led to a contraction of the Russian economy in the first quarter of 2023. G7 leaders will also discuss sanctions against Russia’s multi-billion dollar diamond trade. to the country. China The leaders of the group and the European Union should also dedicate part of the discussions to China and, in particular, to how to protect themselves from possible economic blackmail by Beijing, diversifying production and supply chains. Meanwhile, Xi Jinping’s government is willing to resort to trade barriers. Beijing’s escalation of threats against Taiwan will also be on the table. However, European countries, in particular France and Germany, want to ensure that eliminating risks does not mean cutting ties with China, one of the world’s largest markets, with an adviser to Emmanuel Macron stressing that the G7 “is not an anti-G7 China”. Disarmament Another topic under debate will be nuclear disarmament. This week, UN Secretary-General António Guterres called on G7 countries to declare that they will “under no circumstances” use nuclear weapons. “This is the moment when we must insist on the need to revitalize disarmament, especially nuclear disarmament,” Guterres told Japanese media, before visiting Hiroshima. Japanese Prime Minister Fumio Kishida wants to take advantage of the summit to pressure the other G7 leaders to commit to transparency on stocks and reducing nuclear arsenals. US officials said Washington would not promote an independent agenda on nuclear weapons in Hiroshima, while German government sources said nuclear disarmament was not a priority, adding that the issue was important “mainly for Japan”. Japan has also invited eight countries to the G7 summit, including major emerging economies such as India and Brazil, in a bid to win over some reluctant leaders to oppose Russia’s war in Ukraine and Beijing’s rising military ambitions. Hiroshima The leaders of the G7 have already begun to arrive in Hiroshima, the city that was destroyed by an atomic bomb from the United States, launched on August 6, 1945, causing the death of 140,000 people. For Saturday (20) is scheduled a visit to the Peace Memorial Museum in the city, which houses exhibitions on the dimension of the tragedy. Kishida, Joe Biden, Rishi Sunak and other G7 leaders are expected to tour the exhibits, including a simulation that replicates the wave of destruction that followed the bombing, with the human toll represented by ordinary objects – torn school uniforms, the contents of a burnt lunchbox and a tricycle whose three-year-old owner died 24 hours after the bombing. The decision of the Japanese Prime Minister to choose Hiroshima to host the meeting comes with a strong dose of symbolism, whose most striking physical presence, the atomic bomb dome, will be represented when the leaders lay flowers at a funeral memorial for the 333,907 people whose deaths were blamed on the atomic bomb nearly eight decades ago. Furthermore, Fumio Kishida’s family hails from Hiroshima and the current Japanese Prime Minister was an elected official of the city. Kishida intends to use the G7 Summit to convince his guests, including the UK, France and the US, which together have thousands of nuclear warheads, to commit to transparency about their stockpiles and reduce them. In the run-up to the summit, Kishida spoke of his desire for “a world without nuclear weapons”. “I believe that the first step in any nuclear disarmament effort is to provide first-hand experience of the consequences of dropping an atomic bomb and firmly convey the reality,” said the Japanese prime minister. *Reproduction of this content is prohibited
Agência Brasil
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