Tokyo, April 27: A top US envoy was heading to Japan Tuesday for talks on a long-simmering row over an unpopular American military airbase, as both sides signalled gradual progress toward a resolution.
Centre-left Prime Minister Yukio Hatoyama said he wanted “to put the final touches” to a government proposal on where to relocate Okinawa island’s contentious US Marine Corps Air Station Futenma.
Kurt Campbell, US assistant secretary of state for East Asian and Pacific affairs, said Washington had now received “serious proposals from the Japanese government that included promising elements.”
His comments, reported in Japanese in the Asahi Shimbun, came before his expected arrival in Tokyo on Tuesday evening.
Yet both sides declined to give away details of how they intend to end the dispute that has strained ties between the allies and raised the political heat on the seven-month-old Japanese government.
On Sunday 90,000 protesters rallied on Okinawa to demand the US base be moved off the island to reduce the burden on nearby residents, including aircraft noise, pollution and the threat of accidents.
Several dozens protesters also demonstrated in Tokyo Tuesday.
The row erupted last year when Hatoyama promised to review a 2006 pact to move the Futenma base from a crowded urban area of Okinawa to a coastal stretch of the subtropical island, where residents also oppose it.
Hatoyama has since explored several alternatives, including moving some air operations to Tokunoshima island, north of Okinawa, but residents there have also protested against the idea of hosting US forces.
As Hatoyama has scrambled for options ahead of a self-imposed May 31 deadline, and his ministers have made at times contradictory remarks on the issue, his cabinet approval ratings have dived into the 20-percent range.
Washington has consistently said it prefers the original 2006 relocation plan, which itself was a decade in the making, but has also signaled increasing willingness to listen to Japan’s alternative proposals.
—Agencies