Japan will postpone a deadline for resolving a row over relocating a US base by up to half a year to November, abandoning Japanese Prime Minister Yukio Hatoyama’s original end-of-the-month target, the Sankei Shimbun said yesterday.
The decision will be conveyed to the US side as early as next week, the paper said, while Kyodo news agency reported diplomatic sources saying US Secretary of State Hillary Clinton would visit Japan on Friday to discuss the base issue.
Public perceptions Hatoyama has mishandled the issue over a US Marine base on the southern Japan island of Okinawa have eroded his popularity ahead of an upper house election, with a poll published by Jiji news agency on Friday showing support for his government had fallen below 20 percent for the first time.
Hatoyama’s Democratic Party needs a decisive win in the upper house vote expected in July to enact laws smoothly as Japan struggles to keep a recovery on track while reining in massive public debt.
The Sankei Shimbun said, citing unnamed government officials, that the postponement decision was made at a meeting on Friday of cabinet ministers including Japanese Foreign Minister Katsuya Okada and Chief Cabinet Secretary Hirofumi Hirano as well as Hatoyama.
Analysts have said the next reasonable deadline after the end of this month would be November, when US President Barack Obama will visit Japan for an Asia-Pacific leaders summit.
During the campaign that swept his party to power last year, Hatoyama raised hopes the US Marines’ Futenma airbase could be shifted off Okinawa, despite a 2006 deal with Washington to move the facility from a crowded city to a less populous site on the island.
However, with his self-imposed end-of-this-month deadline for settling the feud looming, Hatoyama shifted gears, saying he had come to realize that some Marines must stay on the island to deter threats.
Last month, tens of thousands of Okinawans rallied to demand the premier keep his promise and activists plan to form a human chain around Futenma airbase today.
HOLLYWOOD IN TURMOIL: Mandy Moore, Paris Hilton and Cary Elwes lost properties to the flames, while awards events planned for this week have been delayed Fires burning in and around Los Angeles have claimed the homes of numerous celebrities, including Billy Crystal, Mandy Moore and Paris Hilton, and led to sweeping disruptions of entertainment events, while at least five people have died. Three awards ceremonies planned for this weekend have been postponed. Next week’s Oscar nominations have been delayed, while tens of thousands of city residents had been displaced and were awaiting word on whether their homes survived the flames — some of them the city’s most famous denizens. More than 1,900 structures had been destroyed and the number was expected to increase. More than 130,000 people
Some things might go without saying, but just in case... Belgium’s food agency issued a public health warning as the festive season wrapped up on Tuesday: Do not eat your Christmas tree. The unusual message came after the city of Ghent, an environmentalist stronghold in the country’s East Flanders region, raised eyebrows by posting tips for recycling the conifers on the dinner table. Pointing with enthusiasm to examples from Scandinavia, the town Web site suggested needles could be stripped, blanched and dried — for use in making flavored butter, for instance. Asked what they thought of the idea, the reply
US Secretary of the Treasury Janet Yellen on Monday met virtually with Chinese Vice Premier He Lifeng (何立峰) and raised concerns about “malicious cyber activity” carried out by Chinese state-sponsored actors, the US Department of the Treasury said in a statement. The department last month reported that an unspecified number of its computers had been compromised by Chinese hackers in what it called a “major incident” following a breach at contractor BeyondTrust, which provides cybersecurity services. US Congressional aides said no date had been set yet for a requested briefing on the breach, the latest in a serious of cyberattacks
A group of Uyghur men who were detained in Thailand more than one decade ago said that the Thai government is preparing to deport them to China, alarming activists and family members who say the men are at risk of abuse and torture if they are sent back. Forty-three Uyghur men held in Bangkok made a public appeal to halt what they called an imminent threat of deportation. “We could be imprisoned and we might even lose our lives,” the letter said. “We urgently appeal to all international organizations and countries concerned with human rights to intervene immediately to save us from
RSS