Next year's Group of Seven foreign ministerial meeting will be held in Hiroshima ahead of the main Ise-Shima summit for the leaders of the major industrialized nations from May 26 to 27, the government officially announced Friday.

The G-7 finance ministers meeting will meanwhile be held in Sendai. The two ministerial meetings will be probably scheduled for March or April 2016.

By choosing Hiroshima, the government hopes to rally international support for nuclear disarmament and nonproliferation. The city was the first to experience nuclear warfare when it was destroyed by an atomic bomb on Aug. 6, 1945.

Local expectations remain strong that U.S. President Barack Obama, who has pledged to seek a world without nuclear weapons, will set foot in Hiroshima.

Observers say Washington is likely to think carefully about whether to let a visit by Secretary of State John Kerry to Hiroshima be viewed as laying the groundwork for a possible visit by Obama.

"Hiroshima is an appropriate place for G-7 foreign ministers to gather to send out messages for world peace, prosperity and the future as the city is a symbol of reconstruction from the atomic bombing," Foreign Minister Fumio Kishida said.