TOKYO (AFP) -
US
Secretary of State John Kerry and fellow envoys from the G7, including
nuclear powers Britain and France, will visit Hiroshima?s Peace Memorial
Park this month, Japan announced.
Kerry will be the first US
secretary of state to have ever visited the iconic park, where he is set
to lay flowers at the memorial dedicated to the victims of the world's
first nuclear attack on August 6, 1945.
Japanese Foreign Minister
Fumio Kishida said late Saturday: "Foreign ministers from the G7
countries will all visit Hiroshima Peace Memorial Museum and offer
flowers at the cenotaph for the victims on April 11."
The visit
will take place on the sidelines of a foreign ministers' meeting this
month, where the envoys are scheduled to hammer out the agenda for the
G7 summit in May.
US officials are still considering a possible
visit to Hiroshima by President Barack Obama during his trip to Japan
for the meeting, however, no official announcement has been made.
Japan
has long urged world leaders to visit Hiroshima and Nagasaki to see the
horrors of the atomic bombings and join efforts to eradicate nuclear
arms.
In 2008 then House of Representatives Speaker Nancy Pelosi
laid flowers at the memorial park, as the highest-ever sitting US
official to do so.
US ambassador Caroline Kennedy and
under-secretary for arms control and international security Rose
Gottemoeller also attended the Hiroshima memorial service to mark the
attack's 70th anniversary last year.
The world's first atomic bomb
killed about 140,000 people in Hiroshima, including those who survived
the explosion itself but died soon after due to severe radiation
exposure.
Three days later, the US military dropped a plutonium bomb on the port city of Nagasaki, killing some 74,000 people.
Washington has never apologised for the attacks.
The
bombings are controversial in the United States, where opinion remains
divided over whether their use in the closing days of World War II was
justified.
© 2016 AFP
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