Japan, US agree on relocating Marine base - report
(Reuters)
Updated: 2005-10-26 14:46

Japan and the United States have agreed on where to relocate a U.S. base on the southern Japanese island of Okinawa, Kyodo news agency said on Wednesday, clearing the way for a deal on realigning U.S. bases in Japan and solving a problem that has plagued the alliance for nearly a decade.

Kyodo quoted Japanese Defense Minister Yoshinori Ohno as saying the deal was reached in talks with U.S. Defense Deputy Undersecretary Richard Lawless.

Ohno said the United States had agreed on Japan's proposal over relocating the Marines' Futenma air base, Kyodo added.

Earlier on Wednesday, Japan's top government spokesman said Lawless, who heads the U.S. delegation, had extended his stay in Japan so the two sides could hold an unscheduled third day of talks.

Chief Cabinet Secretary Hiroyuki Hosoda said officials were trying to reach a deal ahead of a planned meeting this weekend between their defense and foreign ministers in Washington and a visit to Japan by President George W. Bush on November 16.

U.S. Marines demonstrate their weapons to visiting Japanese Self-Defense Force cadets at Camp Schwab on Japan's southern island of Okinawa in this June 19, 2003 file photo. [Reuters/file]

Japanese officials have said the Futenma dispute could overshadow other aims of the realignment, including tighter ties between U.S. and Japanese forces and sorting out how to share the regional security burden amid concerns about North Korea's nuclear program and Beijing's military build-up.

Japanese media have reported that the row over Futenma led U.S. Defense Secretary Donald Rumsfeld to cancel a visit to Japan this month.

The relocation talks have been complicated by reluctance in Japanese communities to host U.S. military bases due to concern about crime, accidents, noise and environmental problems associated with them.

The initial agreement to move Futenma's facilities was made in 1996 following the rape of an Okinawan schoolgirl by three U.S. servicemen the previous year.

Resentment of the U.S. presence runs especially deep in Okinawa, one of Japan's poorest areas and home to about half the nearly 50,000 U.S. military personnel in Japan.

Located in a densely populated part of the island, Futenma has come to symbolize friction over the U.S. military presence on Okinawa. Local ire flared last year after a U.S. helicopter crashed on a university campus, although no one was hurt.

The United States had proposed building a new offshore facility to replace Futenma, while Japan had insisted on incorporating the base's airport into a separate Marine base, Camp Schwab, also on Okinawa.

But last week Japan floated a compromise to build the facility on an area stretching from land inside Camp Schwab to landfill offshore.

Environmental groups oppose any plan involving landfill, citing it would destroy Okinawa's precious ocean, home to endangered wildlife including dugongs, or sea cows.

"We're not protesting just because it involves a U.S. base," said Junichi Sato, campaign director for Greenpeace Japan. "We'd be doing the same thing if the plans involved a private airport. The Okinawan ocean is an especially important resource among all the oceans in Japan and it must be preserved.

"If this were America, they wouldn't build a base in a part of the ocean where manatees, say, lived. So there seems to be a little bit of a double standard here."