US presses Japan on base pact

The US defense secretary has pressed the Japanese government to quickly proceed with a plan to relocate a controversial US military base to southern Okinawa Island.

After meeting Japan's Prime Minister Yukio Hatoyama and Defense Minister Toshimi Kitazawa, Defense Secretary Robert Gates urged Japan to stick to a 2006 agreement to allow for a new replacement airbase to be built on the island by 2014.

Gates said the base move was the 'lynchpin' of the wider agreement, under which both countries also agreed to move 8,000 Marines to Guam, a relocation to be partly financed by Japan.

"Our view is this may not be the perfect alternative for anyone but it is the best alternative for everyone," Gates said in a joint press briefing with Kitazawa.

Many residents of Okinawa, fed up with aircraft noise and the large US troop presence, want the base to be moved off the island or even out of Japan — a view Hatoyama and his coalition allies have supported in the past.

Hatoyama has said he plans to review the wider Tokyo-Washington agreement that included the relocation of the US Marine Corps Futenma Air Base from an urban area of Okinawa to a less-populated northern coastal area.

The United States has some 47,000 troops based in Japan, more than half of them on Okinawa island, where residents have also been angered by crimes committed by service members and environmental concerns.

Gates' two-day visit is the first by a member of Obama's cabinet since Japan's new government took power, which has signaled it wants a less subservient relationship with the US.

Gates later left for Seoul, where he was due to hold talks on the nuclear-armed North Korea, before heading Thursday to Slovakia for a NATO meeting of defense ministers on Friday.

Ties between Japan's center left government and the Obama administration has been clouded due to Okinawa issue.

US President Barack Obama is scheduled to visit Japan next month.