TOKYO (Kyodo) -- The ruling Liberal Democratic Party led by Japanese Prime Minister Shigeru Ishiba is not sending an observer to an upcoming meeting in March in New York of the signatories of the U.N. nuclear ban treaty, a senior executive said Tuesday.

The decision contrasts with a move by the Komeito party, the LDP's junior coalition partner, to send a member to the meeting, which comes on the 80th anniversary year of the U.S. atomic bombings of Hiroshima and Nagasaki toward the end of World War II in 1945.

"We are not thinking about it," LDP Secretary General Hiroshi Moriyama told a press conference when asked if the ruling party will send anyone to the conference.

The party's No. 2 also said the decision has been conveyed to Komeito.

Despite calls at home, especially from atomic bomb survivors, for the government to attend the meeting, Ishiba has remained noncommittal.

Japan, which has been under the protection of the U.S. nuclear umbrella in the postwar era, is not a member of the U.N. Treaty on the Prohibition of Nuclear Weapons. Nuclear powers such as the United States have not acceded to the treaty, which entered into force in 2021.

Moriyama said the LDP, in line with the Japanese government's position, will push for nuclear disarmament within the regime of a different treaty, the Treaty on the Non-Proliferation of Nuclear Weapons, that recognizes Britain, China, France, Russia and the United States as nuclear states.

This year's nuclear ban treaty conference comes after Nihon Hidankyo, the Japanese atomic bomb survivors' group, won the Nobel Peace Prize last year.

Komeito Secretary General Makoto Nishida told a separate press conference that the decision on whether to send anyone to the conference was up to the LDP itself.

But he said Japan "cannot serve as a bridge between countries that possess nuclear weapons and those who do not, without knowing what is discussed at the conference."