The US ambassador to the United Nations is on a visit to South Korea and Japan as part of efforts to rein in North Korea's nuclear and missile programs. Linda Thomas-Greenfield will stop off in Nagasaki, one of the two cities to ever experience an atomic bombing.
Thomas-Greenfield spoke to NHK in Tokyo on Thursday ahead of the visit.
She said, "Most delegations go to Hiroshima, and the people of Nagasaki have also had similar experiences. And I wanted to highlight the Nagasaki experience, engage with people there."
Thomas-Greenfield's visit to the city -- the first by a US ambassador to the UN -- will take place before she leaves Japan on Saturday. She is expected to meet with local officials and to speak with students.
She had spent several days in South Korea as part of a tour to address threats from the North. That visit followed a UN Security Council meeting last month in which Russia vetoed a resolution that would have extended the mandate of a panel of experts to monitor sanctions on North Korea.
Thomas-Greenfield said, "We will work within the UN, with our partners Japan, Korea, as well as others, to find other ways that we get the analysis and the reporting that we need to ensure that sanctions are being abided by."
She added that the sanctions are still in place. However, the mandate for the panel that oversees them will expire at the end of the month.