Western ambassadors to skip Nagasaki memorial after Israel snub
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The US and British embassies said their ambassadors would not take part in a ceremony marking the 79th anniversary of the bombing of Nagasaki.
PHOTO ILLUSTRATION: UNSPLASH
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TOKYO - Ambassadors from Western countries, including the United States, will skip a ceremony marking the 79th anniversary of the bombing of Nagasaki after Israel was snubbed, officials said on Aug 7.
Nagasaki’s mayor last week said that Israel’s ambassador Gilad Cohen was not invited to the Aug 9 event
The US and British embassies said on Aug 7 that their ambassadors would not take part as a result and that their countries would be represented by lower-ranking diplomats. Media reports said that Australia, Italy, Canada and the European Union, who together with the US, Britain and Germany signed a strongly worded joint letter to Nagasaki’s mayor in July, would follow suit.
US ambassador Rahm Emanuel will not attend “after the mayor of Nagasaki politicised the event by not inviting the Israeli ambassador”, an embassy spokesperson told AFP. Instead, Mr Emanuel, 64, who was former president Barack Obama’s chief of staff, will go to a separate event at a temple in Tokyo, the spokesperson said.
The British embassy said that ambassador Julia Longbottom would also not be in Nagasaki, saying that not inviting Israel “creates an unfortunate and misleading equivalency with Russia and Belarus – the only other countries not invited to this year’s ceremony”.
A spokesperson for the French embassy said that its No. 2 would attend, telling AFP that the “decision not to invite the representative of Israel is regrettable and questionable”.
The European Union’s ambassador would not take part “due to his agenda” and the bloc would be represented by a lower-level diplomat, a spokesperson told AFP.
The German embassy told AFP that the head of its political division would attend, with the decision made “in light of the absences and availability” of senior embassy staff.
Nagasaki mayor Shiro Suzuki had said last week that the decision not to invite Mr Cohen was “not politically motivated” but based on a desire to “hold the ceremony in a peaceful and sombre atmosphere”.
In June, Mr Suzuki said Nagasaki had sent a letter to the Israeli embassy calling for an “immediate ceasefire” in Gaza.
Mr Cohen, who was invited to and attended a memorial ceremony on Aug 6 in Hiroshima, last week had said the Nagasaki decision “sends a wrong message to the world”.
“As a close friend and like-minded nation of Japan, Israel has attended this ceremony for many years to honour the victims and their families,” he wrote on social media platform X.
On Aug 5, Mr Cohen told US broadcaster CNN that the security concerns were “invented” and that he was “really surprised by (Suzuki) hijacking this ceremony for his political motivations”.
In their letter to Mr Suzuki seen by AFP, the six Western envoys had warned that if Israel was excluded, “it would become difficult for us to have high-level participation at this event”.
Government spokesman Yoshimasa Hayashi on Aug 7 declined to comment, saying invitations were “a decision for the organiser, Nagasaki City”. A Nagasaki official in charge of the ceremony said it was “obviously better to have high-level individuals, like ambassadors themselves, taking part”. He told AFP: “What is important is that representatives of the countries will attend the ceremony.” AFP
