By Lindsay Whipp and Mure Dickie in Tokyo
Published: April 26 2010 03:00 |
Last updated: April 26 2010 03:00
An estimated 90,000 people held a rally in Okinawa yesterday, piling fresh pressure on Yukio Hatoyama, Japan's prime minister, as they demanded the removal from the island prefecture of a controversial US marine airbase .
The demonstration, one of the largest held in Okinawa, follows weeks of increasingly desperate efforts by Mr Hatoyama's administration to come up with a new relocation plan for the Futenma base ahead of a self-imposed May deadline.
The Washington Post on Saturday reported that US officials were "pleased" by a Japanese proposal it said was made last week that indicated Tokyo would "broadly accept" an existing agreement under which Futenma was to be moved to a site largely reclaimed from Okinawa's scenic Henoko Bay.
Katsuya Okada, foreign minister, said the Washington Post report was "not true", but gave no details of whether Tokyo had made any formal proposal on Futenma or what such a proposal might involve. Mr Hatoyama said the report was "not necessarily true" and that he could not accept the existing relocation deal, adding that reclaiming land from Henoko Bay would be a "desecration of nature".
A narrowing of differences between Washington and Tokyo on what to do with Futenma could go a long way to repairing relations that have frayed badly since Mr Hatoyama decided to rethink the existing relocation deal.
However, Mr Hatoyama previously courted Okinawan voters by promising to try to move the base out of the prefecture and the political cost of sticking with Henoko Bay was underlined by the scale of yesterday's rally and the increasingly vocal opposition from local leaders.
"I strongly demand [the Futenma base] is moved out of the prefecture or out of the country," Susumu Inamine, mayor of Nago city, told the crowd which reportedly included about 40 mayors.
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