'Biden weighs visit to Japan's Nagasaki during G-7 summit in May'

UNITED STATES: Both the U.S. and Japanese governments have come up with a proposal for a Nagasaki visit, the Nikkei newspaper reported, adding that the United States had approached Japan with the plan.

U.S. President Joe Biden is considering a trip to the Japanese city of Nagasaki with Prime Minister Fumio Kishida during a G-7 summit visit next year, media reported on Tuesday.

Kishida will host G7 leaders in the city of Hiroshima for a summit in May that is expected to focus on threats posed by nuclear weapons. The United States dropped a nuclear bomb on Hiroshima on Aug. 6, 1945, during World War Two. It dropped one on Nagasaki three days later.

In 2016, then U.S. President Barack Obama became the first incumbent U.S. president to visit Hiroshima. No sitting U.S. president has ever visited Nagasaki. Both the U.S. and Japanese governments have come up with a proposal for a Nagasaki visit, the Nikkei newspaper reported, adding that the United States had approached Japan with the plan. Kyodo News first reported the plan.

The White House and Japanese government did not immediately respond to requests for comment. Japan will use its turn next year in a leadership role at the Group of Seven and elsewhere to press Russia to halt its war in Ukraine, Minister of Foreign Affairs Yoshimasa Hayashi said at a Reuters NEXT conference this month.