JAPAN: The United States and Japan look set to avoid collision over Marine base time for Obama visit

Record ID: 463289

  • Title: JAPAN: The United States and Japan look set to avoid collision over Marine base time for Obama visit
  • Date: 12th November 2009
  • Summary: TOKYO, JAPAN (RECENT) (REUTERS) SECURITY CHECK POINT SET UP PRIOR TO OBAMA'S VISIT TO JAPAN POLICEMAN POLICE STOPPING CAR POLICE SEARCHING VEHICLE CARS PASSING CHECK POINT NEWS CONFERENCE BY OKINAWA CITY MAYORS AT FOREIGN CORRESPONDENTS' CLUB OF JAPAN (SOUNDBITE) (Japanese) GINOWAN CITY MAYOR YOICHI IHA SAYING: "We would like to ask President Obama to give up buil
  • Embargoed: 27th November 2009 12:00
  • Keywords:
  • Location: Japan
  • Country: Japan
  • Topics: International Relations
  • Reuters ID: LVA946GWI9TAUZ8BAOTXMLWOOXYO
  • Story Text: The United States and Japan look set to avoid a collision over where to relocate a Marine base when President Barack Obama visits Tokyo this week, but the row could still fray security ties in the months ahead.
    A dispute over a replacement facility for Futenma air base on Japan's southern island of Okinawa, a key part of a realignment of U.S. troops in Japan, has strained the alliance, seen as the core of regional security arrangements.
    A massive anti-base rally was held rin Okinawa recently ahead of Obama's arrival in Japan.
    "I think that the U.S. government is also having a hard time understanding where Hatoyama wants to lead the bilateral relations. And as a result, I think they are having some difficulties involved between the two countries, particularly on the issue of the relocation of U.S. bases in Okinawa," said Koichi Nakano, associate professor in political science at Sophia University in Tokyo.
    "The issue of Okinawa bases in particular is standing out as a thorny issue between the two countries, and there's no chance that that's going to be resolved before Obama's visit. Therefore, I think the two leaders are going to try to save face by looking friendly to each other on television. But beyond that, I don't think they can really go into all that much detail about where the two counties need to be headed," Nakano said.
    Japanese Prime Minister Yukio Hatoyama, who took office in September pledging to forge more equal ties with Washington, had said before his party's election victory that he wanted to move the base off Okinawa to ease the burden on residents there.
    But U.S. officials say they want to push ahead with a 2006 deal to move it from the crowded city of Ginowan in central Okinawa to a remoter site by 2014 as a prerequisite to moving 8,000 Marines off the island to the U.S. territory of Guam.
    The Marine base row in Okinawa coincides with deepening questions about how China's rising military and economic clout will reshape security ties.
    Hatoyama has said that he had no plan to decide by the time of Obama's trip -- or to say when he would make up his mind.
    Obama is arriving in Japan on Friday (November 13) for the first time as president. The trip will also take him to an Asia-Pacific Economic Cooperation (APEC) summit in Singapore, China and South Korea
    "We would like to ask President Obama to give up building another military base that would destroy the environment, as well as to solve the issues of the existing Futenma air base, which poses extremely danger to local residents," Yoichi Iha, mayor of Ginowan City where the controversial Futenma base is located, recently told reporters in Tokyo.
    Many residents of Okinawa, a subtropical island about 1,600 km (1,000 miles) south of Tokyo that hosts about half the 47,000 U.S. military personnel in Japan, have long resented what they see as an unfair burden for maintaining the security alliance.
    "I don't see any progress made since Obama became president with regard to peace and U.S. bases in Japan," said Katsuzo Shirane, a 72-year-old retired office worker.
    A 47-year-old pharmacy owner, Yukari Ouchi said: "I just hope Obama and Hatoyama will have a candid, straightforward conversation to solve all the pending issues."
    Further delay would make deciding harder and risk angering Washington, although few analysts expect strains over security ties to affect trade and investment between the world's two biggest economies.
    Japanese cities of Hiroshima and Nagasaki, which have long advocated a nuclear-free world, as well as Obama City in northwestern Japan, which has been an ardent cheer leader for Obama by namesake, had hoped that Obama would visit their towns, but Obama will only stay in Tokyo during the upcoming two-day visit.
    ENDS.
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