Outgoing Japanese PM mulls skipping speech at UN General Assembly

TOKYO (Kyodo) — Japanese Prime Minister Fumio Kishida is considering cutting short his trip to New York next month and not addressing the U.N. General Assembly due to a scheduling conflict with his ruling party’s leadership election, sources close to him said Wednesday.

Kishida, whose popularity has plunged amid a political funds scandal in his Liberal Democratic Party, said earlier this month that he will not run in its presidential election slated for Sept. 27, marking the end of his three-year term as premier.

Japan has been allocated a slot for a speech on the afternoon of Sept. 26 in New York. But as Kishida would need to return to Tokyo in time for the LDP election, the government has failed to finalize arrangements, the sources said.

It is also uncertain whether Foreign Minister Yoko Kamikawa will make the trip to New York, given that she has expressed eagerness to run in the LDP race. Japan’s ambassador to the United Nations might make the address at the assembly instead, the sources said.

During his stay in New York, Kishida is likely to meet with U.S. President Joe Biden, who has decided to drop out of the country’s presidential race in November, and attend a summit of the four-way Quad grouping involving the United States, Australia and India.

The annual high-level session of the U.N. General Assembly is set to take place over seven days from Sept. 24. Kishida’s planned visit to the United States from Sept. 22 will be his last overseas trip before resigning as prime minister. He took office in October 2021.

Kishida is also expected to join the U.N. Summit of the Future to discuss how best to tackle global challenges and the “FMCT Friends talks,” aimed to negotiate a proposed fissile material cut-off treaty to ban further production of the substance for nuclear arms.