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Germany's Baerbock calls for world without nukes in Nagasaki

July 10, 2022

Following her trip to Indonesia for G20 and a stop-off in Palau, German Foreign Minister Annalena Baerbock has arrived in Japan. She visited the nuclear hit city of Nagasaki.

https://p.dw.com/p/4Dv46
Annalena Baerbock looking at a museum exhibit at the Nagasaki museum dedicated to the nuclear bombing of the city in 1945.
Baerbock visited the Nagasaki Atomic Bomb Museum on her first of two days in JapanImage: Thomas Imo/photothek/picture alliance

Germany's Foreign Minister Annalena Baerbock arrived in the Japanese city of Nagasaki on Sunday, following her attendance at the G20 summit in Indonesia on Friday and a brief stop in the Pacific Island nation of Palau on Saturday.

Baerbock visited the Atomic Bomb Museum in the city that was hit by a US nuclear bomb on August 9, 1945, where she laid a wreath in memory of the 70,000 people who were killed.

It is one of the only two cities, along with Hiroshima, to ever be hit by a nuclear weapon.

German Foreign Minister Annalena Baerbock with Nagasaki mayor Tomihisa Taue
German Foreign Minister Baerbock met Nagasaki's mayor as part of her stop in western JapanImage: Britta Pedersen/dpa/picture alliance

The two stand "like no other place for absolute annihilation and war, and as a symbol for the warning against the use of nuclear weapons," the German foreign minister said.

She called for a world without such destructive weapons and said the German government supports disarmament, "even if the current global situation is quite different."

A 'world without nuclear weapons'

Baerbock wrote in the museum's guest book saying that she was leaving "with a heavy heart" but also that she felt strengthened in "the communal striving for a more peaceful world without nuclear weapons."

She also called for the two countries to work together in keeping the memory alive as the number of living witnesses decreases. This should include recalling the genocide carried out by Germany in the Second World War, she said.

Baerbock took part in a conversation about peace and globalization at the Junshin Catholic University in Nagasaki.

On Monday, the foreign minister will visit Tokyo. Japan is holding elections on Sunday, just days after former Prime Minister Shinzo Abe was shot dead in the town of Nara.

ab/msh (dpa, Reuters)