US air base to stay on Okinawa, says Japanese premier

Japan's premier has dropped a plan to move a United States airbase off Okinawa island, despite having pledged to do so during the last election campaign. Yukio Hatoyama made the announcement from Okinawa, where his visit was greeted with protests by hundreds of angry locals.

Reuters

"I really feel sorry as I visit here today that I must ask for the Okinawan people's understanding that part of the base operations would have to stay", Hatoyama told reporters after meeting the local governor.

The premier had pledged to relocate the US Marine Corps Air Station Futenma from its current site in the centre of Ginowan city off the island altogether.

But efforts to find alternative locations met with resistance from prospective host towns.

Hatoyama, who had set a deadline to decide on the base's future by 31 May, now says that he will return to a compromise solution agreed in 2006, whereby Futenma will be moved to a remoter location on Okinawa's north-east coast.

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Correspondent Julian Ryall in Tokyo

Rosslyn Hyams

Around 2,000 US Marines and their helicopter operations will be moved to the smaller island of Tokunoshima, although residents there have protested the plan.

The campaign promise has come back to haunt Hatoyama, says RFI's correspondent in Tokyo, Julian Ryall.

"By giving everybody involved in the whole process a voice, he has given everybody a chance to disagree with whatever he's done," Ryall says.

According to him, Hatoyama's decision to side with the US rather than the populations of Okinawa and its neighbouring islands could cost the government voters ahead of upper-house elections in July.

Okinawa hosts more than half of the 47,000 American troops based in Japan as part of a post-World War Two security treaty.