G7 foreign ministers set for talks in Japan, Israel-Gaza war to top agenda
Top diplomats of Canada, France, Germany, Italy, Japan, the UK, the US and the EU are gathering amid two serious conflicts.
Foreign ministers of seven global powers along with the European Union are gathering in Japan for two days of talks that will centre on Israel’s ongoing war in Gaza.
Top diplomats of Canada, France, Germany, Italy, Japan, the United Kingdom, and the United States, as well as the EU – which make up the Group of Seven (G7) bloc of democracies – are due to hold talks in Tokyo on Tuesday – as the death toll in Gaza mounts and concerns grow that the war could devolve into a regional crisis.
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Israel, after a surprise attack on October 7 by Hamas, the group that rules Gaza, that killed more than 1,400 people in Israel, has waged a monthlong assault on the Gaza Strip, relentlessly bombarding the enclave and sending in ground forces for the first time since 2014.
Israeli attacks have killed more than 10,000 Palestinians, more than a third of them children, according to Gaza’s officials, while displacing 1.5 million people and decimating much of the territory’s infrastructure.
The war will feature prominently in the G7 meeting, but reaching common ground may be challenging due to the countries’ varying political and economic loyalties, analysts said.
“Europeans are divided and this division is also certainly visible within the G7,” said Thomas Gomart, director of the French Institute of International Relations.
“Europeans are divided and this division is also certainly visible within the G7,” said Thomas Gomart, director of the French Institute of International Relations.
SOURCE: AL JAZEERA AND NEWS AGENCIES
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Tokyo — Group of Seven (G7) support for Ukraine in its war with Russia will not be affected by the intensifying Middle East conflict, Japan said on Tuesday as the group’s foreign ministers prepared to hold virtual talks with Kyiv during a meeting in Tokyo.
The G7 nations — Britain, Canada, France, Germany, Italy, Japan and the US — as well as the EU, meet in Tokyo on November 7-8 to discuss issues including Russia’s war in Ukraine and the Israel-Gaza crisis.
“Our commitment to continue strict sanctions against Russia and strong support for Ukraine has not wavered at all, even as the situation in the Middle East intensifies,” Japan’s foreign minister Yoko Kamikawa told a press conference.
- She said the G7 was arranging a virtual meeting with Ukraine’s foreign minister, Dmytro Kuleba, to be held during the Tokyo meeting.
- G7 countries recognise that Russia is settling into its war in Ukraine for the longer term and this requires enduring military and economic support for Kyiv, a senior US official said after the bloc’s foreign ministers met in September.
- The group has been at the forefront of sanctions on Russia since Moscow invaded Ukraine in February 2022, with Ukrainian President Volodymyr Zelensky making a surprise appearance at the G7 leaders’ summit in Hiroshima in May.
Japan said on Tuesday that it would take an unavoidable hit from US sanctions on the Arctic LNG 2 project in Russia, in which Japan companies Mitsui & Co and JOGMEC hold a combined 10% stake.
Finding its voice on Ukraine appears to have proved easier for the G7 than tackling the spiraling Israel-Gaza crisis which has claimed thousands of civilian lives and threatens to spill into a regional conflict. Since the war erupted, the G7 has issued just one joint statement on the conflict, amounting to a few sentences. Other group members have issued separate statements. . .
- G7 foreign ministers are preparing “some sort of statement” to be issued after the Tokyo talks, Kamikawa said declining to comment on its contents.
Reuters
