Obama visit to Hiroshima should not be viewed as an apology, White House says | TheNews Linzer

Obama ‘will not revisit the decision to use the atomic bomb’ at the end of the second world war as he makes first visit to city by a sitting US president

Barack Obama’s historic visit to Hiroshima should not be interpreted as an apology, his spokesman said on Tuesday in the wake of the announcement that Obama would become the first sitting president to visit the site where the US dropped an atomic bomb in 1945, killing an estimated 140,000 people in the final days of the second world war.

Asked if the trip might be seen as an apology, the White House press secretary, Josh Earnest, replied: “If people do interpret it that way, they’ll be interpreting it wrongly.”

Earnest declined to comment on the morality of America’s decision to drop the atomic bomb, for which there have been calls for the country to apologise. He said: “The president intends to visit to send a much more forward-looking signal for his ambition of realising the goal of a planet without nuclear weapons.” Continue reading...





Published By - Theguardian.com- Tech News, Politics news, UK and world political comment and analysis: Tuesday 10 May 2016 20.07 BST