Jan 24 08:25 PM US/EasternTOKYO, Jan. 25 (AP) - (Kyodo) — Prime Minister Yukio Hatoyama on Monday called the victory in Sunday's Nago mayoral election of a challenger opposed to hosting a U.S. Marine base in the Okinawa city a "manifestation of the popular will."
Susumu Inamine, who opposes relocating the U.S. Marine Corps' Futemma Air Station in Ginowan, another Okinawa city, to Nago, a less densely populated city, beat the incumbent mayor, who had expressed willingness to accept the relocation plan.
"I want to offer congratulations to Mayor Inamine and his supporters for his victory," Hatoyama told reporters outside his official residence.
Noting that a government committee is "energetically" studying the relocation issue, he said, "We have said the state will responsibly reach a conclusion on this issue by the end of May" by conducting a "zero-base" review. "We will implement it without fail," he added.
The panel, headed by Chief Cabinet Secretary Hirofumi Hirano, is exploring an alternative to the existing plan to move Futemma's flight operations to a new facility to be built at the Marines' Camp Schwab without excluding the plan.
The Futemma relocation is part of a broader agreement on the reconfiguration of U.S. forces in Japan forged between Japan and the United States in 2006, and is linked to the transfer of about 8,000 Marines from Okinawa to Guam by 2014.
Defense Minister Toshimi Kitazawa separately told reporters Monday morning that the government must "take extremely seriously" the outcome of the Nago mayoral poll and "overcome difficulties" in trying to reach a conclusion on the Futemma transfer.
The Defense Ministry does not plan to halt environmental assessment procedures for the existing relocation plan, and Cabinet ministers are expected to talk about what to do following the poll, the minister indicated.
The panel headed by Hirano has been looking into the relocation issue from scratch, he added. "It is not good that there is a trend to put a lot of pressure on locals to make a choice on an issue that must be resolved by the central government," he said.
Kitazawa also said the election reflected rising expectations among local citizens that the heliport functions of the Futemma base will be moved out of the prefecture or even abroad after the government led by Hatoyama's Democratic Party of Japan came to power last September.
During the campaign for the House of Representatives election last August, Hatoyama advocated moving the facility out of Okinawa or out of Japan altogether.
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