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Japanese opposition, activists slam pact with US

Japanese opposition parties and local officials yesterday criticized a new military agreement with the US, with one politician calling it "extremely dangerous."

The agreement on a major realignment of the alliance "is a radical change in security policies," said Seiji Mataichi, secretary-general of the Social Democratic Party of Japan.

"It has gone beyond the contents of the [1960] Japan-US Security Treaty. We cannot accept that," Mataichi said in a statement.

"The report, which authorizes Japan's support and commitment for military action by the United States, is extremely dangerous," he said.

On Saturday the two governments adopted an interim report designed to cut US forces in the Japanese island of Okinawa, deploy a powerful missile defense radar in Japan and bind their militaries more closely together.

Seiji Maehara, head of the Democratic Party of Japan, said in a television interview that the report would lift limits on Japan's military support for the US.

"If there is no explanation about how the government wants to make a change, [the limit] will be chipped away gradually," Maehara said. "The government must ask people if the government can go ahead with redefinition" of the treaty.

Under the 1960 treaty, Japan's support for the US military is limited to activities contributing to peace and stability in the "Far East."

The plan to realign US military forces in Japan also triggered plans for protest rallies and drew harsh opposition from local officials and citizens' groups, who say the burden of hosting the troops is just being shifted from one community to another.

"It's a mere shift of the problem," said Sekinari Nii, governor of Yamaguchi prefecture in western Japan. It has been designated as the next base of the US Carrier Air Wing currently stationed at the US Atsugi Air Base in Kanagawa, southwest of Tokyo.

"At present we are not willing to accept the plan," Nii told a news conference, saying the central government should notify local communities of the accord first.

Iwakuni's Mayor Katsusuke Ihara saying his city and others had not been included in the decision-making process.

"Japan and the US have made a unilateral decision, with no consultation whatsoever with local communities," Ihara said. "I urge the Japanese government to provide an explanation, open its ears to local opinion, and enter into talks."

"The US is simply playing a trick with numbers," said activist Takashi Kishimoto of the Okinawan Peace Movement Center, on plans to transfer about 7,000 Marines from Okinawa to the US Pacific island territory of Guam. "The actual functions of US bases in Okinawa, as well as risks to the local community, won't be reduced at all."

Okinawa prefecture's Governor Keiichi Inamine had earlier criticized plans to transfer the Futenma Marine Corps Air Station from one part of Okinawa's main island to reclaimed land off another part.

Inamine said he wanted to see US bases moved off Okinawa altogether.

Environmentalists have said the planned project, using a landfill to create a runway, would destroy part of a coral reef area that's home to the dugong, an endangered marine mammal.

US Defense Secretary Donald Rumsfeld has said the two countries would work together to reduce the impact of the US military on Japanese communities.
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