Tokyo, May 02: Japan’s Prime Minister Yukio Hatoyama is scheduled to discuss a new site for a controversial US military base amid criticism from the opposition over the plan.
Hatoyama will hold a meeting with three mayors from Tokunoshima island in southwest Japan where a new site has reportedly been identified for the US Marine Corps’ Futenma Airbase.
The site, which was due to be relocated elsewhere on Okinawa under a 2006 agreement with Washington, has become a major issue for the premier after the plan for alternative locations provoked mass protests.
Tokunoshima is an island 200 kilometers (120 miles) northeast of Okinawa.
The mayors, whose constituents protested the plan, said they wanted to inform Hatoyama in person of their opposition to any US military presence on their island, AFP reported on Sunday.
“We think we should take pre-emptive steps to oppose the plan before the central government makes a final decision,” Mayor Akira Okubo of the town of Isen told a news conference with the two other Tokunoshima mayors on the same day.
The prime minister, who promised to review the 2006 accord after taking office last year, has been under pressure by left-leaning political allies to find an alternative solution to the issue.
——-Agencies