Apr 20 11:15 PM US/Eastern
TOKYO, April 21 (AP) - (Kyodo) — Prime Minister Yukio Hatoyama renewed his pledge Wednesday to settle the dispute over where to move a U.S. Marine base in Okinawa by the end of May, despite being rebuffed a day earlier by local leaders of a prospective relocation site.
With the rejection by the towns on Tokunoshima Island in Kagoshima Prefecture of his government's request for a meeting on the Futemma Air Station's possible relocation there, the dispute appears to be blanketed further by a cloud of uncertainty.
"While this may be very tough weather, we must bring clear May weather to it without fail," Hatoyama told reporters, comparing clear skies associated with the month to a resolution of the dispute. "We are making all-out efforts to do that."
Asked what his government would do next to break the impasse, the prime minister said, "It's not something I should reveal here."
Noting that he is thinking hard about how to reduce the burden of hosting bases on the people of Okinawa, Hatoyama asked the public to give him tips on the matter to help resolve it.
The Hatoyama government has spent months reexamining the current plan seeking to relocate the Futemma base in the crowded city of Ginowan to a coastal area of the Marines' Camp Schwab in Nago, also in Okinawa.
While it has yet to officially announce its alternative proposal, the idea, according to government sources, is to transfer a helicopter unit at the Futemma base to Tokunoshima, about 200 kilometers northeast of the main island of Okinawa.
But the mayors of the three towns on Tokunoshima brushed aside the idea in light of Sunday's mass protest in which organizers said about 15,000 people participated to oppose the base's potential relocation there. The current relocation plan is the pillar of a broader agreement forged between Japan and the United States in 2006 and is linked to another pillar, the transfer of 8,000 Marines from Okinawa to Guam. The relocation project is slated for completion by 2014.
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