KORIYAMA March 25 – Japanese Prime Minister Shinzo Abe(pic) on Sunday expressed his government’s intention to accelerate coordination with the US to show a specific timeline for the return of some of the land occupied by US forces in Okinawa Prefecture.
“We will negotiate with the US so that we can clearly show the schedule to reduce Okinawa’s burden’s of hosting American military bases,” Japanese news agency Jiji Press quoted Abe as telling reporters.
Abe was discussing a Japan-US agreement that five US military facility sites south of the US Air Force’s Kadena base in Okinawa will be returned in stages to the southernmost Japan prefecture.On Friday, the Abe government applied for the Okinawa governor’s permission for landfill work in the Henoko coastal area of Nago, Okinawa to construct a facility to replace the heliport functions of the US Marine Corps’ Futenma air station located in an urban area of Ginowan or also in Okinawa.
The application invited strong protests from local residents who demand that the Futenma based be moved out of Okinawa. The prime minister hopes to gain local support for the Futenma relocation by working harder to lessen Okinawa’s base-hosting burden, government officials said.
“We must prevent Futenma from being fixed (in Ginowan). The government has responsibility to proceed with the relocation,” he said. In a related development, government sources said Sunday that Abe specifically named the Marines’ Makiminato Service Area when he asked US President Barack Obama in February to work for the early return of the base
sites to Okinawa.
Abe told Obama during discussions at the White House that he hopes for the US cooperation for the return to Okinawa of military facility sites south of the Kadena base such as Camp Kinser. The Makiminato Service Area, in the Okinawa city of Urasoe, is known as Camp Kinser.
Obama said his administration will deal with the request appropriately, according to sources. In an April 2012 progress report on the realignment of US forces in Japan, the Japanese and US governments reaffirmed that the five US military facility sites south of the Kadena base will be returned to Okinawa in stages. The two governments plan to map out and publish soon the timeline for the return.
Saying he is well aware of local residents’ strong opposition to the Futenma relocation plan, Japan’s Defense Minister Itsunori Onodera said Sunday he would explain to them that the plan “will contribute to reducing Okinawa’s overall
burden of hosting US military bases.”
Onodera said he believes Okinawa Governor Hirokazu Nakaima will make a decision in six to eight months on whether or not to approve the government’s landfill application. The remark can be taken to signal Onodera’s hope that Nakaima will approve the application before the Futenma relocation plan becomes a key issue in the Nago mayoral election in early 2014.
BERNAMA
