TOKYO (Reuters) -Japan’s Prime Minister Fumio Kishida will cancel plans to visit central Asia for summits with regional leaders after weather officials flagged that the risk of a major Pacific coast earthquake was higher than usual, public broadcaster NHK said.
The Japan Meteorological Agency issued on Thursday its first-ever warning of the risk of a huge earthquake on the country’s Pacific coast, following one of magnitude 7.1 that struck the southwestern island of Kyushu the same day.
Although the warning does not indicate such a quake will definitely happen, Japan is set to cancel Kishida’s trip in order to prepare for any eventuality, but hopes to hold some of the meetings online instead, NHK added.
The visit to Kazakhstan, Uzbekistan and Mongolia was originally scheduled to run from Friday to Monday. Kishida was to have travelled to Kazakhstan on Friday, followed by a visit to Uzbekistan before heading to Mongolia for a summit on Monday.
The meteorological agency’s advisory warns of a higher probability of a huge earthquake in the Nankai trough, an ocean-floor trench running along Japan’s Pacific coast, where previous quakes have triggered enormous tsunamis.
Japan estimates at 70% to 80% the probability of an earthquake of magnitude 8 or 9 happening around the trough in the next 30 years, according to the infrastructure ministry.
(Reporting by Kantaro Komiya and Sakura Murakami; Editing by Clarence Fernandez)
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