Prime Minister Fumio Kishida is considering attending the upcoming review conference of the Treaty on the Non-Proliferation of Nuclear Weapons slated to be held in New York in August, a government source has said.
If Kishida joins the conference, he will become the first Japanese leader ever to do so. He is planning to deliver a speech early in the month as the gathering runs from Aug. 1 to Aug. 26, the source said Friday.
Kishida, elected from a constituency in Hiroshima, one of the two Japanese cities devastated by U.S. nuclear bombs in 1945, is seen as eager for Japan to play a role in bringing nuclear and nonnuclear states together for accords toward achieving a world without nuclear weapons.