Apr 22 06:38 AM US/Eastern
TOKYO, April 22 (AP) - (Kyodo) — Prime Minister Yukio Hatoyama suggested Thursday that he will seek a replacement facility for the U.S. Marines' Futemma Air Station in Okinawa, rather than just partially relocating a helicopter unit's exercises, to get the base site returned to the Japanese side.
The United States, meanwhile, has rejected the idea of relocating the contentious base to Tokunoshima Island in nearby Kagoshima Prefecture because the island is too far from other Okinawa-based Marine units, a government source said the same day.
Hatoyama has suggested his government will pursue the base's relocation to the island about 200 kilometers to the northeast, but the U.S. rejection has added another layer of difficulty to the bilateral row, which he has vowed to resolve by the end of May.
Defense Minister Toshimi Kitazawa said the same day that it appears "extremely difficult" for the government to meet the deadline.
During a debate at the plenary session of the House of Representatives, Hatoyama said, "Realistically speaking, it's impossible to get (the Futemma base) returned without a replacement facility."
A current relocation plan agreed on between Japan and the United States calls for the Futemma base's relocation to an airfield to be built on a coastal area of the Marines' Camp Schwab in Nago, also in Okinawa, by 2014. The base site will be returned to Japan upon the project's completion.
Hatoyama also asked for support again for the government's ongoing review of the current plan, while the United States has maintained its position that it prefers the existing plan or its modification.
"Not just the people of the prefecture but many in the general public had expressed concern (over the current plan)," Hatoyama said in the session, referring to the opposition to building a new facility by reclaiming the sea nearby. "Had we rammed it through, (the current plan) would not have been (implemented) smoothly, as a result," he said.
On the political responsibility he would bear in the event that he failed to resolve the matter by the deadline, Hatoyama said he has been working on it with determination, adding, "I need not state any further."
On the roughly 10-minute-long informal conversation he held with U.S. President Barack Obama over a working dinner in Washington earlier this month, Hatoyama said that although it was not formal talks, it was not an expression of "cold shoulder or mistrust" to him, either.
"The importance (of the talks) is not determined by the length of the talks," the prime minister said. "I think it was meaningful that I was able to convey my feelings (to Obama) directly and correctly."
According to the government source, the United States has conveyed to Japan that a helicopter unit of the U.S. Marines should not be farther than 65 nautical miles, or 120 km, from the Marines on the ground in refusing the potential relocation to Tokunoshima.
The helicopter unit at the Futemma base is used to transport Marines stationed in Okinawa from bases such as Camp Hansen and Camp Schwab.
The United States has told Japan that it is desirable for the two operations to be close enough to enable them to react to situations swiftly, the source said.
"It's an extremely difficult thing (to achieve) because we must clear various hurdles, namely the U.S. military, local governments and the ruling coalition parties," Kitazawa said at a House of Councillors Foreign Affairs and Defense Committee session, referring to the difficulties meeting the May 31 deadline.
Arrangements have been under way for Hatoyama to visit the city of Kagoshima on May 15 to attend a gathering organized by the ruling Democratic Party of Japan's local chapter ahead of the upper house election this summer, sources close to him said.
The mayors of the three Tokunoshima towns rejected earlier this week a government proposal to meet with Hirano in Kagoshima to discuss the matter, following a mass rally Sunday on the island to protest the base's possible relocation there.
The Hatoyama government, which came to power last September in a historic change of government, has spent months reexamining the existing bilateral plan, which seeks to relocate the helicopter functions of the Futemma base in the crowded city of Ginowan to the new airfield to be built in Nago.
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