The Japanese government will not participate in next month's meeting of signatories of the U.N. nuclear ban treaty in New York, according to Kyodo news.

Japan is not a member of the U.N. Treaty on the Prohibition of Nuclear Weapons but had faced calls to attend the five-day meeting from March 3 as an observer, as this year marks the 80th anniversary of the U.S. atomic bombings of Hiroshima and Nagasaki.

In announcing the decision at a press conference , Foreign Minister Takeshi Iwaya emphasized the significance of nuclear deterrence provided by the Japan-U.S. alliance, saying it is "essential to defend our nation, given we are in the most complicated and severe security environment" since the end of World War II, in an apparent reference to concerns over China, North Korea and Russia.

While being the only country to have experienced nuclear attacks, Japan, which has been under the protection of the U.S. nuclear umbrella in the postwar era, skipped the two previous meetings of the multinational nuclear ban pact in 2022 and 2023.

Iwaya said the government had reviewed cases of nations taking part as observers in past treaty gatherings before concluding that such attendance is "not necessarily effective."

"We have to face the reality of the ongoing nuclear arms race," Iwaya said, adding that the treaty is "incompatible" with the concept of nuclear deterrence and attending the upcoming meeting could "send a wrong message and pose a problem" for Japan's security.

The third round of the pact's talks comes as Tokyo's pledge to realize a world without nuclear weapons attracts attention after Nihon Hidankyo won the Nobel Peace Prize last year.

The Japanese atomic bomb survivors' group, as well as the city and prefectural governments of Hiroshima and Nagasaki, has demanded that Prime Minister Shigeru Ishiba's government join the conference as an observer.

Ishiba, who took office in October, had said he would "seriously think" about Japan's participation.

The 1945 bombings of Hiroshima and Nagasaki led to the deaths of approximately 210,000 people.