Japanese Prime Minister Fumio Kishida said on Saturday that Japan would carefully monitor developments in the investigation against Russian President Vladimir Putin, Kyodo News reported.
Prime Minister Kishida made the above remarks during talks with German Chancellor Olaf Scholz in Tokyo.
Scholz said he also supports the issuance of an arrest warrant for Putin by the International Criminal Court, which oversaw the war crime of forced deportation of Ukrainian children during the Russia–Ukraine War.
For the first time, a court in The Hague has issued an arrest warrant for the head of state of a permanent member of the UN Security Council. Although neither Ukraine nor Russia are parties to the court, Kiev grants the ICC jurisdiction over war crimes.
Earlier, the ICC on Friday issued arrest warrants against the Russian president and Russian official Maria Alekseyevna Lvova-Belova for their alleged plan to send Ukrainian children to Russia, CNN reported.
According to Kyodo News, in a joint news conference with Scholz after the summit, Kishida said they both agreed that they would not use nuclear weapons against Ukraine while reaffirming their commitment to maintaining sanctions against Moscow. Will never accept Russia’s threat to use weapons.
The meeting comes as Japan, which is currently in charge of the Group of Seven, tries to set the groundwork for a G-7 summit to be held in Hiroshima, Kishida’s home constituency, in May. Last year, Germany chaired the G-7.
Along with the European Union, the G-7 also includes the United Kingdom, Canada, France, Italy, and the United States.
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In January, Kishida made a week-long trip to the G7 countries in addition to Germany in the run-up to the summit in the city of western Japan.
In light of growing concerns that Russia could use nuclear weapons against Ukraine in the ongoing war, Kishida is eager to present his vision of a world free of nuclear weapons at the G-7 meeting in Hiroshima, which was hosted by an American was completely destroyed. The atomic bomb in August 1945, according to Kyodo News.
Kishida and Scholz said during their discussions on Saturday that they would work together to ensure the success of the G7 summit in Hiroshima.
The two leaders also agreed that Japan and Germany would cooperate to reform the organization, given their desire to join the United Nations as permanent members of the Security Council.
The United States, along with Britain, China, France and Russia, are the five regular Council members who have veto power. All nuclear are forces.
According to some critics, the council has come across as useless, especially after Russia invaded Ukraine in February 2022.
In Tokyo on Saturday, Japan and Germany held their first high-level intergovernmental discussions.
In response to China’s growing military and economic influence around the world, the countries affirmed that they would step up their economic security cooperation in the mineral and semiconductor industries. Kyodo News reported that this would strengthen the supply network.
