Pelosi wins praise in Hiroshima for bomb visit

0 Comments | AFP, September, 2008

HIROSHIMA, Japan (AFP) — US House Speaker Nancy Pelosi won praise Wednesday for becoming the most senior sitting American official to visit Japan's atom bomb memorial at Hiroshima.

Pelosi, second in line to the presidency after Vice President Dick Cheney, on Tuesday laid flowers at a memorial in the southwestern Japanese city, which was obliterated by a US nuclear bomb on August 6, 1945, near the end of World War II.

Her visit to the memorial was splashed on the front pages of local newspapers, which noted that no sitting US president or vice president had visited the site.

Jimmy Carter and Richard Nixon visited the city out of office.

Pelosi was in Hiroshima for a meeting of parliament speakers of the Group of Eight major industrial powers.

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