Obama in Hiroshima may talk about consequences of nuclear weapons use

WASHINGTON. KAZINFORM - U.S. President Barack Obama may use his upcoming visit to Hiroshima to deliver a message about the need for world leaders to consider the consequences of using nuclear weapons, his close aide said Tuesday, Kyodo reports.

"The tremendous human cost of war in general, that Hiroshima is certainly such a tragic part of but extends across centuries, is something that he'll want to reflect on" during a visit to Hiroshima, Deputy National Security Adviser Ben Rhodes told a think tank event in Washington.
"The importance of being mindful of the toll of war as leaders make decisions will be important to him (Obama)" and particularly as they make decisions related to nuclear weapons, said Rhodes, the presidential adviser for strategic communications and speechwriting.
The president may discuss the importance of thinking of "the cost of the use but also the development of those weapons, and the need to draw from history as a means of committing ourselves to a world without nuclear weapons," Rhodes said.
Obama will reflect on "the need for people in positions of power and their own citizens to keep those issues in mind as they make decisions," he said.
Rhodes joined other U.S. officials in saying Obama is unlikely to deliver a full speech, during what is believed to be a brief stay in the atom-bombed city, on his commitment to seeking a world free of nuclear weapons as he did in Prague in 2009.
The adviser also said he did not know yet whether Obama could meet atomic-bomb survivors in Hiroshima.
Rhodes made the remarks as he and other White House staff were finalizing details about Obama's trip to Hiroshima, the first by a sitting U.S. president, on May 27.
Obama will visit the western Japan city devastated by a U.S. atomic bombing on Aug. 6, 1945, after he attends a two-day Group of Seven summit in Shima in central Japan's Mie Prefecture.
Following last week's announcement of Obama's trip to Hiroshima, Rhodes said the president will not revisit President Harry Truman's decision to use the atomic bomb at the end of World War II.
The United States dropped another atomic bomb on Nagasaki on Aug. 9, 1945, and a total of more than 210,000 people -- most of them civilians -- died in the cities by the end of the year, according to the cities. Japan surrendered in the war six days after the Nagasaki attack.