Japan and the US might have to amend their controversial plan to redeploy troops within the southern island chain of Okinawa to appease local objections, Foreign Minister Taro Aso said on Friday.
Aso said after talks with US Secretary of State Condoleezza Rice that "it would be very difficult, pragmatically speaking, to reach a final agreement on this issue based on the current recommendations.
"Certain adjustments might have to be made because there is certain opposition in the local communities," Aso said in Japanese remarks translated by a foreign ministry interpreter.
The Japanese envoy, making his first visit here as foreign minister, said that Rice "was very aware of that fact that there was such opposition, and we agreed to continue our discussions on this issue."
Japanese Prime Minister Junichiro Koizumi has acknowledged that it will be tough to persuade local residents to accept an Oct. 29 accord to shift a US base in Okinawa and pull troops from the area. But he vowed to try.
The plan would transfer the facilities of Futenma Air Base, long a source of grievances in Okinawa, to an existing camp elsewhere in the province, rather than building a new site away from urban centers.
It would also pull 7,000 Marines from the tiny province, which has hosted about half of the more than 40,000 US troops in Japan, and move them to Guam.
Local leaders have demanded that more troops be removed from Okinawa, which was under US rule from 1945 to 1972.
US troops remain stationed in the country under a security alliance with Japan, which was barred after World War II from maintaining its own military.
A US State Department official confirmed that Aso and Rice discussed the troop redeployment question but would not confirm the possibility that the October accord might be amended.
He did acknowledge that Aso was slated to meet with US Defense Secretary Donald Rumsfeld yesterday, where the issue would likely be raised again.
Aso also told Rice on Friday that Tokyo "will continue its effort to finalize the initiative of the realignment of the US forces no later than March next year," his spokesman, Yoshinori Katori, told reporters.
"The path is very difficult. But we have time until March and the government will continue the effort," he said.
On the Oct. 29 accord, Katori said: "It is an interim agreement, it is not a final agreement and of course adjustments can be possible in working out the final document.
"But at this stage, we don't have a concrete idea if there should be any adjustment," he said.
Tokyo and Washington have held marathon talks since 1996 on relocating Futenma Air Base out of the crowded urban center of Ginowan, where residents complain about aircraft noise.
Opposition to the US military presence was heightened in August last year, when a Marine helicopter crashed into a college building in Ginowan. No one was injured.
Aso also told Rice that revising the US-imposed 1947 Constitution to permit Japan to maintain a military "could take place within a couple of years," Katori said.
Amid persistent fears at home and abroad about a revival of militarist Japan, Koizumi's Liberal Democratic Party has worked out a draft to amend the charter for the first time since its inception.
Aso told his Rice he believed that "many" lawmakers from Japan's largest opposition party, the Democratic Party of Japan, were "forthcoming" over changes to the Constitution, Katori said.
The Constitution is nearly certain to pass parliament, after which it would be submitted to a referendum, with opinion polls indicating it would also easily pass.
A fire caused by a burst gas pipe yesterday spread to several homes and sent a fireball soaring into the sky outside Malaysia’s largest city, injuring more than 100 people. The towering inferno near a gas station in Putra Heights outside Kuala Lumpur was visible for kilometers and lasted for several hours. It happened during a public holiday as Muslims, who are the majority in Malaysia, celebrate the second day of Eid al-Fitr. National oil company Petronas said the fire started at one of its gas pipelines at 8:10am and the affected pipeline was later isolated. Disaster management officials said shutting the
US Vice President J.D. Vance on Friday accused Denmark of not having done enough to protect Greenland, when he visited the strategically placed and resource-rich Danish territory coveted by US President Donald Trump. Vance made his comment during a trip to the Pituffik Space Base in northwestern Greenland, a visit viewed by Copenhagen and Nuuk as a provocation. “Our message to Denmark is very simple: You have not done a good job by the people of Greenland,” Vance told a news conference. “You have under-invested in the people of Greenland, and you have under-invested in the security architecture of this
Japan unveiled a plan on Thursday to evacuate around 120,000 residents and tourists from its southern islets near Taiwan within six days in the event of an “emergency”. The plan was put together as “the security situation surrounding our nation grows severe” and with an “emergency” in mind, the government’s crisis management office said. Exactly what that emergency might be was left unspecified in the plan but it envisages the evacuation of around 120,000 people in five Japanese islets close to Taiwan. China claims Taiwan as part of its territory and has stepped up military pressure in recent years, including
UNREST: The authorities in Turkey arrested 13 Turkish journalists in five days, deported a BBC correspondent and on Thursday arrested a reporter from Sweden Waving flags and chanting slogans, many hundreds of thousands of anti-government demonstrators on Saturday rallied in Istanbul, Turkey, in defence of democracy after the arrest of Istanbul Mayor Ekrem Imamoglu which sparked Turkey’s worst street unrest in more than a decade. Under a cloudless blue sky, vast crowds gathered in Maltepe on the Asian side of Turkey’s biggest city on the eve of the Eid al-Fitr celebration which started yesterday, marking the end of Ramadan. Ozgur Ozel, chairman of the main opposition Republican People’s Party (CHP), which organized the rally, said there were 2.2 million people in the crowd, but
RSS