Japanese Prime Minister Shigeru Ishiba has canceled plans to attend the NATO summit in The Hague on June 24-25. Representatives from South Korea and Australia will also not attend.
Reuters reports this.
Japanʼs Foreign Ministry announced the cancellation of the trip on Monday, just three days after announcing its participation. The ministry said in a statement that the decision was due to "various circumstances". The prime minister has attended every NATO summit since 2022, when Tokyo was first invited after Russiaʼs invasion of Ukraine.
Instead, Foreign Minister Takeshi Iwaya will travel to the Netherlands, the ministry said. He will attend Alliance-related events and hold bilateral meetings.
According to Fuji Television, Shigeru Ishiba canceled the visit because the planned NATO meeting with four Indo-Pacific countries (IP4) is unlikely to take place, as well as because of the low likelihood of a meeting with the US President Donald Trump.
South Korea and Australia, which are members of the IP4 along with Japan and New Zealand, have also said their representatives will not attend the summit. Earlier, a Reuters source reported that Donald Trump wanted to hold a summit with countries in the Indo-Pacific region.
- The Japanese Foreign Ministry announced the prime ministerʼs participation in the summit on June 20. According to the statement, the politician was to "confirm a common vision with allies: the security of the Euro-Atlantic and Indo-Pacific regions is closely linked".
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