Defense chief sees need to extend special law for Iraq assistance

Nov 22 07:38 AM US/Eastern

TOKYO, Nov. 22 (AP) - (Kyodo) — Defense Agency Director General Fumio Kyuma said Wednesday he sees a need to extend the special law allowing Japan to provide reconstruction assistance to Iraq which expires next summer so that the Air Self-Defense Force can continue its aid mission.

"The United Nations' reconstruction assistance will continue for some time. While it continues, Japan must do something, and we should not suddenly change our way," Kyuma said in an interview with Kyodo News.

The four-year duration of the legislation is set to expire in July next year, and the agency chief suggested revising the law to enable the ASDF troops to continue airlifting supplies and personnel between Kuwait and Iraq.

ASDF members began airlifting work from their base in Kuwait to certain airports in Iraq in March 2004 using C-130 transport aircraft, initially to support the Ground Self-Defense Force troops in the southern Iraqi city of Samawah.

But after the GSDF withdrawal from Iraq in July, the ASDF troops expanded their airlifting operations to cover airports in Baghdad and Arbil, considered less stable than the Samawah area, and have been transporting personnel and supplies for the United Nations and the multinational forces.

In relation to a plan to relocate the U.S. Marine Corps Futemma [Futenma] Air Station in Ginowan to the Camp Schwab area in Nago, both in Okinawa Prefecture, Kyuma indicated an idea to build a provisional helipad at Camp Schwab proposed by outgoing Okinawa Gov. Keiichi Inamine would be difficult to realize.

"It is impossible for a military facility to be provisional. There is no way the United States would accept that," Kyuma said, reiterating that he will continue to urge Okinawa to accept the current government relocation plan.

Inamine, who opposes the current government plan, made a counterproposal earlier this year to build a tentative helipad on land at Camp Schwab so people living near the Futemma [Futenma] facility, located in a densely populated area, can avoid the risk of possible accidents involving U.S. military aircraft for the time being.

Hirokazu Nakaima, the governor-elect set to replace Inamine, has also opposed the government plan and said the helipad proposal is worthy of consideration. But he said after winning Sunday's gubernatorial election that he will deal flexibly with the Futemma [Futenma] relocation issue.

Kyuma also said the government is considering introducing a new subsidy system for Okinawa and other local governments affected by the U.S. military realignment in connection with the fiscal 2007 budget.

In a related development, Kyuma met with Chief Cabinet Secretary Yasuhisa Shiozaki, Hidenao Nakagawa, secretary general of the Liberal Democratic Party, and other government and ruling party members Wednesday morning to discuss how to go about holding discussions with the Okinawa government following Nakaima's election as next governor.

Government leaders and LDP executives are scheduled to meet with Nakaima when he visits Tokyo next week.

US military plans win boost in Okinawa vote

Nov 20 09:46 AM US/Eastern

Voters in Japan's Okinawa Islands gave a boost to the US military's global realignment plan by rejecting a campaign seeking to scale down the key US deployment, observers said.

But newspapers warned Sunday's vote showed there was still strong opposition to the troops in the southern island chain, which hosts three quarters of the US military facilities in Japan.

Voters elected an ally of conservative Prime Minister Shinzo Abe as governor, rejecting by a margin of more than five percentage points an opposition-backed candidate who wanted to trim the US presence.

Governor-elect Hirokazu Nakaima has favored a less confrontational approach on the troops and emphasized improving the economy of the islands, where unemployment runs at twice the national average.

He told AFP on Sunday: "Basically, negotiations with the United States will be through the central government."

The election result is seen as giving a freer hand to Abe, who wants to strengthen military cooperation between the US and Japan in light of the threat from North Korea, which last month tested a nuclear bomb.

"It will be easier for the government to deal with Okinawa now," Okinawa University president Moriteru Arasaki said. "I think Nakaima will be even softer than his predecessor toward the government."

Nakaima replaces retiring fellow conservative Keiichi Inamine, who reluctantly consented to a plan on US troops after unsuccessfully pushing for a greater pullout.

Japan and the US agreed in May to pull out 8,000 of the 20,000 US troops from Okinawa to the US territory of Guam, part of former defense secretary Donald Rumsfeld's plan for a sweeping realignment of the US military.

Okinawa, which is strategically close to the Taiwan Strait, is home to more than half of the US troops in Japan. Apart from Afghanistan, the only other Asian country with a sizable permanent US military presence is South Korea, where the troops have encountered growing hostility.

The local Ryukyu Shimpo daily said Okinawans to "chose the flexible stance of seeking a stable, independent economy through talks with the government, rather than a head-on confrontation."

"But the central government would be mistaken to think the real intent of Okinawans in the election result was to give the green light for the US military realignment plan," it said in an editorial.

Yasuhisa Shiozaki, the chief spokesman for Abe's government, said the central government wanted to meet as soon as possible with the new governor and "listen carefully."

"It is important to note that the Okinawan public has expressed yet again that its foremost concern is vitalization of the Okinawan economy," Shiozaki said.

Some residents said they were resigned that the future of US troops was out of their hands.

Local leaders unsuccessfully tried to block the US military from deploying Japan's first Patriot surface-to-air missiles in Okinawa after North Korea tested seven missiles in July.

"I don't think it's possible to remove bases from the prefecture," said Chiemi Teruya, 51, who is out of work.

Hitomi Takara, a 36-year-old mother of a toddler, said of opposition-backed candidate Keiko Itokazu: "I was skeptical about whether her stance on US bases was really realistic."

But Masumi Hirachi, a 55-year-old school teacher, was disappointed by the election result.

"The central government is trying to impose more on Okinawa," she said. "I believe Okinawa really should speak out to the national government."

Nakaima, Itokazu neck-and-neck in Okinawa governor race: Kyodo poll

Nov 19 07:53 AM US/Eastern

(AP) - NAHA, Japan, Nov. 19 (Kyodo) — Ruling bloc-backed Hirokazu Nakaima and opposition-supported Keiko Itokazu are in a neck-and-neck battle in Sunday's Okinawa gubernatorial election, an exit poll by Kyodo News showed immediately after the poll stations were closed at 8 p.m.

The third candidate Chosuke Yara is a distant third, the exit poll showed. All three candidates are seeking their first term as Okinawa governor to replace outgoing Gov. Keiichi Inamine in a race highlighted by the relocation of a U.S. military facility.

Voter turnout was 51.53 percent as of 7:30 p.m., 0.45 point higher than the corresponding time in the previous election in the prefecture with about 1.05 million voters, election officials said.

The result of the election is expected to be known late Sunday. Political circles at the national level are also paying attention as the outcome could influence the implementation of the U.S. military realignment plans in Japan.

Both Nakaima, 67, and Itokazu, 59, oppose the central government's current plan to relocate the U.S. Marine Corps' Futemma [Futenma] Air Station in Ginowan to the Marines' Camp Schwab area in Nago within Okinawa Prefecture by building V-shaped runways on a new airfield on existing land and landfills at the camp.

But Nakaima, a former vice governor, has acknowledged that moving the facility somewhere within the prefecture may be inevitable, while former House of Councillors member Itokazu has repeatedly expressed opposition to creating a new U.S. military facility inside Okinawa and called for it to be moved overseas.

The Japanese and U.S. governments reached a final agreement in May on the scheme to build the new airfield using existing land at Camp Schwab and a new landfill along its coastline by 2014 as part of the U.S. military realignment in Japan.

Inamine opposed the plan and insisted that either a civilian-military airport be built off the shore of Camp Schwab as agreed to in an earlier plan or that the airfield be moved outside of Okinawa, which hosts the bulk of the U.S. military presence in Japan.

Until the current Japan-U.S. accord, the Futemma [Futenma] relocation issue had been deadlocked as the initial plan for an offshore runway over coral reefs off the Marines' camp, agreed to in 1996 by Tokyo and Washington, was stalled due to environmental concerns and opposition from protesters.

Nakaima, who is supported by the ruling Liberal Democratic Party and its coalition partner, the New Komeito party, and also endorsed by the local business community, has emphasized the need to stimulate the local economy with the aim of lowering the unemployment rate.

A former chairman of Okinawa Electric Power Co., he has pledged to continue the policies of the Inamine prefectural administration.

Itokazu, a former member of the local Okinawa Shakai Taishuto (Okinawa Social Mass Party), who was an independent in the Diet's upper house after being elected in July 2004, has gained support from local labor unions and citizens' groups.

She is supported by six political parties, including the main opposition Democratic Party of Japan, the Japanese Communist Party and the Social Democratic Party, and has also received backing from a political group led by independent House of Representatives member Mikio Shimoji, who used to belong to the LDP.

Yara, 54, a clothing sales businessman who heads the local Ryukyu independence party, is seeking independence for Okinawa, saying that would enable the southwestern island prefecture to see off the U.S. military and to achieve a healthy economy.

In late June, Inamine said he will retire when his second four-year term ends in November.

Okinawa voters go to polls to pick new governor

Nov 18 06:38 PM US/Eastern

NAHA, Japan, Nov. 19 (AP) - (Kyodo) — Voters in Okinawa Prefecture went to the polls Sunday to choose the successor to outgoing Gov. Keiichi Inamine, with the relocation of a U.S. military base and local economic concerns among the major issues.

The election is expected to be a close race between Hirokazu Nakaima, 67, a former vice governor who is backed by Japan's ruling coalition, and former House of Councillors member Keiko Itokazu, 59, supported by the opposition camp.

The third candidate is Chosuke Yara, 54, a clothing sales businessman who heads the local Ryukyu independence party.

The result of the election is expected to be known late Sunday. Political circles at the national level are also paying attention as the outcome could influence the implementation of the U.S. military realignment plans in Japan.

Both Nakaima and Itokazu oppose the central government's current plan to relocate the U.S. Marine Corps' Futemma Air Station in Ginowan to the Marines' Camp Schwab area in Nago within Okinawa Prefecture by building V-shaped runways on a new airfield on existing land and landfills at the camp.

But Nakaima has acknowledged that moving the facility somewhere within the prefecture may be inevitable, while Itokazu has repeatedly expressed opposition to creating a new U.S. military facility inside Okinawa and called for it to be moved overseas.

The Japanese and U.S. governments reached a final agreement in May on the scheme to build the new airfield using existing land at Camp Schwab and new landfill along its coastline by 2014 as part of the U.S. military realignment in Japan.

Inamine opposed the plan and insisted that either a civilian-military airport be built off the shore of Camp Schwab as agreed to in an earlier plan or that the airfield be moved outside of Okinawa, which hosts the bulk of the U.S. military presence in Japan.

Until the current Japan-U.S. accord, the Futemma relocation issue had been deadlocked as the initial plan for an offshore runway over coral reefs off the Marines' camp, agreed to in 1996 by Tokyo and Washington, was stalled due to environmental concerns and opposition from protesters.

Nakaima, who is supported by the ruling Liberal Democratic Party and its coalition partner, the New Komeito party, and also endorsed by the local business community, has emphasized the need to stimulate the local economy with the aim of lowering the unemployment rate.

A former chairman of Okinawa Electric Power Co., he has pledged to continue the policies of the Inamine prefectural administration.

Itokazu, the deputy chief of the local Okinawa Shakai Taishuto (Okinawa Social Mass Party), who was an independent in the Diet's upper house after being elected in July 2004, has gained support from local labor unions and citizens' groups.

She is supported by six political parties, including the main opposition Democratic Party of Japan, the Japanese Communist Party and the Social Democratic Party, and has also received backing from a political group led by independent House of Representatives member Mikio Shimoji, who used to belong to the LDP.

Yara is seeking independence for Okinawa, saying that would enable the southwestern island prefecture to see off the U.S. military and to achieve a healthy economy.

In late June, Inamine said he will retire when his second four-year term ends in November.

U.S. to return 2 military facilities in Okinawa to Japan

Nov 17 06:24 AM US/Eastern

TOKYO, Nov. 17 (AP) - (Kyodo)— The United States has agreed to return two military facilities in Okinawa to Japan on Dec. 31 under a 1996 agreement aimed at reducing the huge U.S. military presence in Japan's southernmost prefecture, Japan's Defense Facilities Administration Agency announced Friday.

The two are the Sobe Communication Site and the Yomitan Auxiliary Airfield, both in the village of Yomitan on Okinawa Island.

This paves the way for the United States to hand over a total of about 300 hectares of land to Japan, including two other sites, the Aha Training Area in the village of Kunigami and the Senaha Communication Station in Yomitan, which the United States has already agreed to return, officials said.

They are four of the 11 U.S. military facilities covering about 5,000 hectares which the United States agreed to return to Japan under the 1996 agreement reached at the Japan-U.S. Special Action Committee on Okinawa [SACO].

The SACO agreement calls for the United States to hand over the Sobe site after its functions are relocated to the U.S. Marine Corps' Camp Hansen in the village of Kin on the same island.

The United States had also agreed to return the Yomitan airfield by March 2000 after the Sobe site's functions are relocated.

But their return has been postponed because of a delay in the construction of the communications system at Camp Hansen.

The [1996] SACO agreement calls, among other things, for vacating the Marines' Futemma Air Station in five to seven years on condition that its helicopter functions be relocated within Okinawa. However, Futemma base remains because of the difficulties Japan is encountering in building relocation facilities.

Asked about the slow pace of the handover process 10 years after the SACO agreement, Iwao Kitahara, head of the Defense Facilities Administration Agency, said that the 4,000-hectare Northern Training Area in the villages of Kunigami and Higashi on the northern Okinawa Island accounts for much of the 5,000 hectares the United States has agreed to return.

Kitahara told reporters the Japanese government will make best efforts to secure the handover of the remaining facilities as soon as possible.

Rumsfeld's exit triggers concern in Tokyo

11/10/2006
The Asahi Shimbun

Reacting to the sudden resignation of U.S. Secretary of Defense Donald Rumsfeld, Japan made clear Thursday it is committed to assisting in Iraq's reconstruction and implementing the planned U.S. military realignment here.

While Rumsfeld's departure prompted officials in Tokyo to ponder the ramifications, Chief Cabinet Secretary Yasuhisa Shiozaki touched on concerns Thursday over a plan to relocate the functions of Marine Corps Air Station Futenma in Ginowan, Okinawa Prefecture, to Nago in another part of the prefecture.

The plan, which centers on a new V-shaped runway in Nago, is a major part of the U.S. transformation plan affecting Japan.

"This is something that was agreed on between our governments, and from our position, there is no change in the plan to proceed calmly while gaining public understanding," Shiozaki told reporters.

Rumsfeld and Secretary of State Condoleezza Rice met with Foreign Minister Taro Aso and then Defense Agency Director-General Fukushiro Nukaga in May in Washington to finalize the plan.

In his November 2003 visit to Japan, Rumsfeld stopped by Futenma to see the facility. As a result, Rumsfeld pushed forward on the relocation, officials said.

Rumsfeld and Nukaga also agreed in April, during three hours of intense negotiations, the amount Japan is to shoulder for shifting thousands of Marine Corps troops from Okinawa to Guam.

The Defense Agency and the Pentagon are now working out final details of that relocation.

A senior agency official hinted Thursday at anxiety about future negotiations with Washington. "Rumsfeld was able to sum up various positions on the U.S. side and at the same time reach common ground with Japan," he said.

Taku Yamasaki, chairman of ruling Liberal Democratic Party's Research Commission on Security, commented on Washington's Iraq policy in connection with the Democrat victory in the U.S. midterm elections Tuesday.

"There is bound to be a shift from use of power to priority on dialogue," Yamasaki told fellow party members.

A senior Foreign Ministry official was more pessimistic. "There isn't much choice (on Iraq policy), and whatever means are taken, they don't seem likely to work," the official said.

Meanwhile, Prime Minister Shinzo Abe on Wednesday night emphasized Japan's continued support for U.S.-led efforts in Iraq.

However, the same senior Defense Agency official said Thursday, "(Rumsfeld's resignation) is sure to affect the SDF dispatch to Iraq."

Although the Ground Self-Defense Forces stationed in Samawah in southern Iraq were withdrawn this summer, Air SDF personnel and aircraft are still based in Kuwait to airlift multinational forces and United Nations personnel in and out of Iraq.

The special measures law to support the Iraqi reconstruction, which covers the SDF dispatch, expires in July 2007. To extend it, the government will have to submit a bill to the Diet next year. (IHT/Asahi: November 10,2006)

The Democrats and Defense

By Peter Baker
Friday, November 3, 2006; Page A19

The New Politics of National Security
By Kurt Campbell and Michael O'Hanlon
Basic Books, 319 pp., $26.00

HARD POWER

The last-minute campaign furor over Sen. John F. Kerry's "botched joke" about the uneducated becoming "stuck in Iraq" was no joke for the Democratic Party. Once again, with an election looming, it found itself cast as the peacenik, antiwar, hostile-to-the-military, soft-on-defense, weak-on-terrorists party.

Whether that will stick won't be known until Tuesday. Polls have shown that voters for a change are more likely at the moment to trust Democrats on Iraq and terrorism than Republicans. But that support seems perishable, and even if Democrats win one or both houses of Congress, they face a long-term challenge of redefining their image when it comes to national security.

That's where Kurt Campbell and Michael O'Hanlon come in. Their provocative new book, "Hard Power: The New Politics of National Security," offers a manifesto of sorts for a party still struggling to find its voice in the post-Sept. 11 world. As a party, Democrats have been torn between two poles as represented in the extreme by Joseph I. Lieberman, the hawkish Connecticut senator, and Ned Lamont, the antiwar liberal who beat him in a Democratic primary.

Campbell and O'Hanlon come closer to Lieberman than to Lamont, offering a muscular vision for U.S. power in a dangerous world tempered by the sort of pragmatism they say the Bush administration has been missing. "Democrats must make clear that they, like Republicans, understand that effective diplomacy must often be backed by the credible threat and sometimes use of military force," they write.

In fact, they argue that President Bush has it right in some ways, praising his priorities in terms of promoting democracy and free trade, defeating terrorists, and opening a new relationship with India. "Hard-power Democrats, independents, and moderate Republicans should therefore not run against the Bush legacy on matters of ideas so much as of seriousness, competence, and execution."

This may be a hard sell even within their own party, where the loudest voices these days argue for a radical departure from Bush's policies. A succession of think tanks and foreign policy elites have been trying to counter the angry blogosphere with a more nuanced position for the party, with limited success. If Democrats win on Tuesday, the internal fight over national security will grow even more pronounced. Democrats have prospered this year mainly by being against Bush without coming up with a genuine alternative. If they find themselves in charge on Capitol Hill, they will face pressure to develop a common posture.

Campbell and O'Hanlon bring years of experience and study to the debate. Campbell served as a Pentagon official under George H.W. Bush and Bill Clinton and now works as senior vice president at the Center for Strategic and International Studies. O'Hanlon is a senior fellow at the Brookings Institution and a frequent commentator on foreign policy.

As they note, Democrats have been hobbled for decades by the public perception of weakness. The party of Franklin D. Roosevelt, Harry S. Truman and John F. Kennedy was transformed by the Vietnam War and has wrestled with national security ever since.

Clinton's discomfort with the military -- his awkward initial salute to Marines standing guard at his helicopter, his fight over gays in uniform, his tentative response to Bosnia -- exemplified the problem to many. But during eight years in office, he grew more accustomed to his role as commander in chief, responding more confidently to the Kosovo crisis.

Bush, though, has used the issue against Democrats as a cudgel for years, managing to paint Kerry, a combat veteran decorated for service in Vietnam, as weak on security. This year, Bush has cited votes against his counterterrorism legislation to assert that Democrats do not even want to spy on, detain or try terrorists; he went so far this week as to declare that if Democrats win, so will terrorists.

The authors argue that it is not enough to simply shout back; Democrats, they say, "sometimes try too hard to sound like anti-Republicans -- and wind up weakening themselves more than their political opponents in the process."

Instead, they propose a detailed agenda dealing with homeland security, the military, Iraq, terrorism, nonproliferation, energy and China. They propose increasing active-duty armed forces by 50,000, creating State Department rapid-response teams for post-conflict situations and setting up regional National Guard planning centers to better respond to crises such as Hurricane Katrina or a terrorist attack. They would continue missile-defense development but at a lower level, cut the F/A-22 program in half, revamp the Joint Strike Fighter program, retire more Minuteman missiles and Trident submarines, and cut back the V-22 Osprey tilt-rotor aircraft.

On Iraq, they heartily agree with fellow Democrats that Bush "bungled" the war and "dispelled any notion of innate Republican superiority in matters of international hard power." But they criticize their party's rush for the door. "Democrats have focused mostly on missteps in Iraq. But there has been a less vibrant debate about the potential downsides of a precipitous American military withdrawal and how the dangerously eroding U.S. position in Iraq might somehow be made more promising."

It's a debate Campbell and O'Hanlon want to make more vibrant. If Democrats find the right course, the authors argue, the party has a chance to make a historic shift in the party's political perception. If not, they say, "Democrats are apt to remain on the political sidelines, left to contemplate what went so terribly wrong."

Baker is a White House correspondent for The Washington Post.

Okinawa mayor protests U.S. missile defense system deployment

Oct 2 12:37 AM US/Eastern

NAHA, Japan, Oct. 2 (AP) - (Kyodo)—Okinawa Mayor Mitsuko Tomon lodged a protest on Monday with the local bureau of the Defense Facilities Administration Agency against allowing the deployment of an advanced surface-to-air missile defense system at a U.S. base in the city without local consent.

The first batch of equipment for the Patriot Advanced Capability-3 interceptor system arrived Saturday in Okinawa Prefecture ahead of the deployment of the system later this year at the U.S. Kadena Air Base and the U.S. Air Force's Kadena Ammunition Storage Area.

The U.S. forces started delivering the equipment early Monday morning from a military port in the Okinawa prefectural capital of Naha to the Kadena base, about 20 kilometers away.

The mayor of Okinawa and the village heads of Kadena and Chatan, which host the Kadena base, earlier agreed to oppose the deployment, saying it will lead to strengthening the functions of the base.

The deployment is being implemented based on an agreement reached between Japan and the United States in May on the realignment of the U.S. military presence in Japan.

The amount of equipment which arrived Saturday is enough to fill some 500 vehicles and will take four or five days to finish carrying. Another, smaller, amount of equipment is expected to arrive at the Naha military port by the end of this week, according to the U.S. forces.

The PAC-3 missiles and launchers are scheduled to be brought within two weeks to a U.S. military facility in Uruma, Okinawa Prefecture.

The United States plans to partially begin the operation of the PAC-3 system by the end of December. It is expected to become fully operational by the end of next March.

The PAC-3 system is designed to intercept incoming ballistic missiles in their final phase, after they have reentered the Earth's atmosphere and have descended to altitudes of just over a dozen kilometers and before they reach their targets on the ground, Japanese officials said earlier.

Mayor says U.S. air station in Okinawa failing safety standards

Nov 1 06:30 AM US/Eastern

NAHA, Japan, Nov. 1 (AP) - (Kyodo) — Yoichi Iha, mayor of the Ginowan City in Okinawa Prefecture, said Wednesday the United States is operating Futemma Air Station in the city when the military facility fails applicable safety standards in their homeland, a move apparently aimed at calling on the U.S. and Japanese governments to move toward its early closure.

Iha said the United States defines an area within 4,500 meters from the edge of an air base runway as having the risk of accidents and ban the usage of the land.

Noting that schools and houses are densely built in areas adjacent to the air station in the city center, Iha said "the operation of the base disregards the safety and lives of residents."

In a bilateral agreement struck in May on realigning the U.S. military presence in Japan, Tokyo and Washington plan to relocate the U.S. Marine Corps' Futemma Air Station within the prefecture by building a new airfield by 2014.

Iha told a press conference that "the danger should not be left unattended until then."

"Any accident like the one in which a U.S. helicopter crashed into the Okinawa International University campus could happen," he said.

Three crew members of the helicopter, which took off from Futemma, were injured in the 2004 accident. It sparked an outpouring of protest against the base among local citizens.