Israel-Hamas war crowds crisis-heavy global agenda as Blinken, G-7 foreign ministers meet in Japan

Before wrapping up the Mideast portion of his trip — that included stops in Israel, Jordan, the West Bank, Cyprus, Iraq and Turkey — Mr. Blinken said he would brief his G-7 colleagues on the status of his efforts, seeking their advice and pressing ahead.

Fresh from a tour of the Middle East, U.S. Secretary of State Antony Blinken shifted his intense diplomacy on the Israel-Hamas war to Asia on Tuesday, as he and his counterparts from the Group of Seven leading industrial democracies began two days of talks in Japan.

The devastating month-long conflict in Gaza and efforts to ease the dire humanitarian impacts of Israel's response to the October 7 Hamas attack were set to be a major focus of the meeting. Yet with the Russia-Ukraine war, fears North Korea may be readying a new nuclear test, and concerns about China's increasing global assertiveness, it is far from the only crisis on the agenda.

“Even as we are intensely focused on the crisis in Gaza, we’re also very much engaged and focused on the important work that we’re doing in the Indo-Pacific and in other parts of the world,” Mr. Blinken told reporters in Ankara, Turkey, before leaving the Middle East for Asia.

In Tokyo, Mr. Blinken and foreign ministers from Britain, Canada, France, Germany, Japan and Italy will be looking for common ground on approaches to the Israel-Hamas war that threatens to destabilize already shaky security in the broader Middle East and seeking to maintain existing consensus positions on the other issues.

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Before wrapping up the Mideast portion of his trip — a four-day whirlwind that included stops in Israel, Jordan, the West Bank, Cyprus, Iraq and Turkey — Mr. Blinken said he would brief his G-7 colleagues on the status of his efforts, seeking their advice and pressing ahead.

“I’ll have an opportunity to debrief my colleagues on what we’ve learned and what we’ve done during this trip, and to continue that work and carry it forward,” he said.