Apr 27 08:22 AM US/Eastern
TOKYO, April 27 (AP) - (Kyodo) — Foreign Minister Katsuya Okada told representatives from Okinawa on Tuesday that U.S. Marines are "necessary deterrence" to defend the lives of Japanese and their property against threats from overseas, as Okinawa politicians and citizens called for the removal of a Marine base from the prefecture.
Zenshin Takamine, chairman of the Okinawa prefectural assembly, quoted Okada as saying he does not think of relocating the U.S. Marine Corps' Futemma Air Station abroad and that the Marines' presence is indispensable as the nation's Self-Defense Force alone cannot defend Japan.
Prior to the meeting, Okada said in a press conference that the SDF "has limits in appropriately responding to any contingency on the Korean Peninsula and military buildups of Asian countries such as China."
Okada declined to comment on possible relocation sites for the Futemma facility, which sits in the center of a residential area in Ginowan, and did not respond to a request by the representatives to make sure that the airstrip will be transferred out of the prefecture, the assembly chief said.
Takamine led the Okinawa delegation which had taken part in a mass rally Sunday in the village of Yomitan to seek the removal of the Futemma base out of the southernmost prefecture, which hosts the bulk of U.S. forces in Japan. The rally drew about 90,000 people.
Japan and the United States reached an accord in 2006 to relocate heliport functions of the Futemma facility to a less densely populated coastal area of the Marines' Camp Schwab in Nago, also in Okinawa, by 2014.
According to government sources, the government is considering modifying the current Japan-U.S. relocation plan.
A pile-supported platform would be built in shallow waters off the coast in Nago, which is expected to reduce the impact on the local marine environment compared with the existing one requiring land reclamation.
Nago Mayor Susumu Inamine, a member of the delegation, joined a sit-in in front of a Diet members' building earlier in the day and said he "believes in" Prime Minister Yukio Hatoyama, who has pledged to try to move the Futemma airstrip out of Okinawa or even abroad.
"I'd like the premier to clearly show a road map" toward the base relocation out of the prefecture, he said.
After meeting with Okada, Inamine told reporters that Nago residents cannot accept either the existing relocation plan or a modified one, because "nature would be damaged anyway by land reclamation or pile- supported platform."
"Every Cabinet minister said the government will take seriously the popular will of the 90,000 Okinawa citizens, but the message did not sound true to us. We got the impression that our passion did not reach (the government)," he said.
Takamine said if Hatoyama visits Okinawa with a plan to transfer the Futemma airstrip within the prefecture, he will refuse to meet with the premier.
Naha Mayor Takeshi Onaga, who conveyed the Okinawa people's request on the base transfer to the U.S. Embassy in Tokyo, said that Political Minister-Counselor Robert Luke told the delegation that the United States believes the existing Futemma transfer plan to Nago is the best one.
Takamine also met with Okinawa affairs minister Seiji Maehara, who told the representatives that he personally feels "ashamed" that the government has not realized the return of the land occupied by the Futemma facility 14 years after Japan and the United States agreed on that.
The two countries agreed in 1996 that the land of the Futemma base will be returned to locals within five to seven years, after a gang- rape of a local schoolgirl in the prefecture the previous year fueled outrage among residents.
Maehara said he was "startled" to learn of the pile-supported platform construction plan in Nago by news reports, according to the assembly chief.
In a meeting with Maehara which was partially open to the media, Nago resident Etsuko Urashima highlighted the economic plight of the city and asked the government not to implement policies that would divide local residents over the base relocation.
"Over the past 13 years, Nago city has been increasingly depopulated. Many nice buildings have been built with state subsidies, but our community has become poorer," she said.
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