Nago mayoral election to be fought by 2 men over U.S. base issue+

TOKYO, Nov. 18 Kyodo - Next January's Nago mayoral election in Okinawa Prefecture will be fought between the incumbent conditionally backing a U.S. base relocation plan and a man opposing it, after supporters of two candidates against the plan agreed Tuesday to field just one of them, sources familiar with the matter said.

The plan to relocate the U.S. Marine Corps' Futemma Air Station from a downtown
residential area of Ginowan in central Okinawa to the less densely populated
city of Nago in northern Okinawa is surfacing as a thorny issue between Japan
and the United States.
The Democratic Party of Japan and the Social Democratic Party initially planned
to recommend former senior Nago education official Susumu Inamine, 64, as a
mayoral candidate, while the Japanese Communist Party had planned to support
part-time university lecturer Yasushi Higa, 65.
The two camps agreed to field Inamine as their unified candidate to fight
incumbent Mayor Yoshikazu Shimabukuro, who has conditionally accepted the
relocation plan, the sources said.
They are scheduled to announce the accord Wednesday, the sources said.
The United States has pressed Japan to implement the relocation plan as agreed
between the two countries in 2006. But the new DPJ-led Japanese government is
hoping to review the planned realignment of U.S. forces in the country,
including the relocation plan.
Prime Minister Yukio Hatoyama has yet to work out a clear government policy on
the issue, but expectations have remained in Okinawa that the government may
seek to move the Futemma facility outside the prefecture, or even outside
Japan, because the DPJ advocated such an idea before becoming the ruling party
after its history victory in the general election in late August.
==Kyodo
2009-11-18 00:26:21