Thursday evening’s Nikkei wrote that Environment Minister Nakagawa told the paper that he held a meeting with a U.S. delegation to COP23 on the sidelines of the conference held on Wednesday in Bonn, Germany. Although the minister said earlier that he would urge the U.S. to reconsider its decision to withdraw from the Paris Agreement, he told the paper on Wednesday that he was told by the U.S. delegation that the United States will not participate in the Paris Agreement unless conditions favorable for the U.S. are established. Meanwhile, Nakagawa announced Japan’s plans to launch the “Ibuki II” greenhouse gas observation satellite in fiscal 2018. Yomiuri wrote that Nakagawa officially announced Japan’s readiness to host a plenary session of the UN Intergovernmental Panel on Climate Change (IPCC) scheduled for May 2019.