Gov't eyes narrowing down base relocation sites by end of March+

TOKYO, Feb. 2 Kyodo - The government intends to narrow down possible relocation sites for the U.S. Marines' Futemma Air Station in Okinawa and select a candidate site by the end of next month, government sources said Tuesday.

A government committee on the issue decided at a meeting the same day to send a
fact-finding mission to Guam for two days from Feb. 10 given that the Social
Democratic Party, one of the junior coalition partners in the government, has
floated the Pacific island as an alternative to a current plan.
With Prime Minister Yukio Hatoyama committed to resolving the relocation issue
by the end of May, the government thinks it necessary to come up with a
specific site by the end of March as it needs time to consult with the United
States and obtain acceptance from local governments in the area to be selected
as the relocation site, the sources said.
The government panel, chaired by Chief Cabinet Secretary Hirofumi Hirano, aims
to consider an alternative site for the Futemma base, while not excluding an
existing plan to relocate the base to Nago, a city in a less populated part of
Okinawa.
If it proves difficult for the panel to reduce the possible sites to just one,
it could produce a final report with multiple options, the sources said.
Now that the panel has decided to send a mission to Guam, panel members are
expected to present their alternative plans for consideration in the latter
half of this month.
The government is expected to discuss the panel's conclusion at a ministerial
committee involving the heads of the three parties in the coalition government,
with Hatoyama expected to make the final decision.
It remains unclear, however, whether the United States would accept a Japanese
proposal by the end of May as anticipated by Tokyo.
Earlier in the day, senior Japanese and U.S. officials gathered in Tokyo for
discussions aimed at deepening the bilateral alliance. The U.S. officials told
their Japanese counterparts that the existing agreement on the relocation is
the best plan.
But Kurt Campbell, U.S. assistant secretary of state for East Asian and Pacific
affairs who is involved in the discussions, told reporters after the meeting
that the United States is ''in no way intransigent'' and that his country is a
''partner'' in the process.
Meanwhile, differences became clearer among Cabinet members on Tuesday over the
possibility of keeping the Futemma base operating as a result of failing to
settle on a relocation site, with Foreign Minister Katsuya Okada repeating such
a possibility.
But Hatoyama reiterated his intention to move the base's heliport functions
elsewhere and have the base shut down, telling reporters, ''The safety of the
residents around the base has been threatened a great deal, and therefore we
must relocate it at all costs.''
''We started out there and are exploring a relocation site on a zero basis,''
the prime minister said. ''Coming back again (to keeping the base in Futemma)
in the end would not be an answer.''
Okada, who said Monday that the Futemma base may have to remain in place if
there is no other option, told a news conference that he meant to express a
sense of crisis with the remark.
''In the worst-case scenario, we (the government) could basically settle on
Futemma if we can find no place that is appropriate (for relocation),'' Okada
told a news conference. The earlier remark ''expressed this sense of crisis on
my part,'' he said.
While Okada stressed his resolve to look for a relocation site for the base,
his earlier remark drew fire from lawmakers in the ruling coalition.
''It is a problem that the foreign minister has shown a different stance from
that of Prime Minister Yukio Hatoyama,'' Yasumasa Shigeno, secretary general of
the SDP, told a separate press conference.
In a meeting earlier Tuesday, Shigeno and his counterpart in the People's New
Party, Shozaburo Jimi, agreed to ask Hirano to give a warning to Okada. Jimi's
party is also a junior partner in the Democratic Party of Japan-led government.
Tokyo and Washington forged an agreement on the reconfiguration of U.S. forces
in Japan in 2006, and as part of the deal, the two agreed to relocate the
Futemma base to the Henoko district of Nago to ease the burden on people in
Ginowan, where the base is located.
But Hatoyama's government, which was swept to power after the DPJ routed the
long-ruling Liberal Democratic Party in an election last August, has been
exploring an alternative to the existing plan in hope of finding a new site
outside of the prefecture.
Hatoyama has come under further pressure to pick a new site after base opponent
Susumu Inamine won the Nago mayoral election in January.
==Kyodo