TOKYO (Kyodo) -- Japanese Foreign Minister Takeshi Iwaya plans to deliver a speech at a preparatory session for the Nuclear Non-Proliferation Treaty's upcoming review meeting scheduled to begin late this month in New York, government sources said Thursday.

Iwaya is expected to call for unity at the third preparatory committee meeting for the 2026 NPT review conference, the sources said, amid deepening divisions between nuclear-armed and non-nuclear states over approaches to disarmament.

It will be the third time a Japanese foreign minister has attended an NPT preparatory gathering and the first since 2018.

The move comes as Prime Minister Shigeru Ishiba's government skipped a U.N. meeting in March on the Treaty on the Prohibition of Nuclear Weapons, despite calls for Japan -- the only country to have suffered atomic bombings during war -- to participate.

The last two NPT review conferences, held in 2015 and 2022, failed to produce an outcome document. Tensions among nuclear-armed nations have also escalated against the backdrop of Russia's invasion of Ukraine and China's rapid military buildup.