US senators said on Friday that they have taken a major step to halt a controversial military base plan on Japan’s Okinawa island and called on the Pentagon to make a fresh assessment.
Brushing aside insistence by the two governments that plans should go ahead, the US Senate Armed Services Committee agreed to bar any funds to move troops from Japan to Guam and ordered a new study on Okinawa’s Futenma base.
The language was part of an annual defense funding act approved on Thursday. It needs approval from the full Senate and House of Representatives, but senators involved said that the action on Asian bases enjoyed broad support.
Senator Carl Levin, a member of US President Barack Obama’s Democratic Party who heads the committee, said that the base plan in Japan increasingly appeared unfeasible and that the US needed to control costs.
“This is a major step to put all these changes on hold and to require some analysis of cost and to take an honest look at what the current plans are and what the alternatives are,” Levin told reporters on a conference call.
The Senate intervened even though the Obama administration had put its foot down with Japan, insisting that the base plan could not be changed. Former Japanese prime minister Yukio Hatoyama resigned last year after failing to fulfill a campaign promise to come up with a new plan on Futenma.
Okinawa is home to half of the 47,000 US troops stationed in Japan under a post-World War II security treaty. Futenma is a particular source of grievance as it is located in what has become a crowded urban area.
Under a 2006 plan first approved by former US president George W. Bush’s administration and a previous conservative government in -Japan, the US would close Futenma and move its aircraft to an isolated beach elsewhere on Okinawa, with about 8,000 Marines leaving Okinawa for Guam in 2014.
The Senate bill prohibits funds for the Marine move until commanders provide an updated plan for Guam — where public support has been dwindling — and the US Department of Defense certifies tangible progress on Futenma.
The bill requires the defense department to study a proposal, spearheaded by Democratic Senator Jim Webb of Virginia, to close and return Futenma’s real estate and move its air assets to Okinawa’s existing Kadena Air Base.
Under Webb’s plan, some air assets would be moved from Kadena to other parts of Japan and Guam — a solution he argued would reduce both congestion and costs.
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