A compromise reached between United States and Japan on Wednesday may see thousands of US troops currently stationed at the Futenma airbase on the Japanese island of Okinawa being moved to Guam instead of waiting for progress on earlier plans to relocate the base to another part of the Japanese island.
Following talks between US and Japanese officials in Washington on Wednesday, the two nations agreed not to couple the planned transfer of US marines from Okinawa to Guam and a 2006 agreement to relocate the air base on Okinawa itself.
Under the 2006 accord, two countries agreed to move 8,000 Marines to Guam and relocate the air base to Camp Schwab, which is in a sparsely populated area located miles north of Okinawa's capital city of Naha.
Nonetheless, plans to relocate the base on the island itself has faced stiff resistance from Okinawa residents, who want it removed from the island altogether. The Japanese government's continued failure to relocate the base on Okinawa due to islanders' resistance has been a cause of tension between the two nations.
During Wednesday's meeting, the two nations agreed that the transfer of US troops to Guam does not require the prior closure of the Futenma base as stated in the 2006 agreement. Nevertheless, the two nations agreed to continue efforts that would eventually lead to the relocation of the air base to Camp Schwab.
Although further details of the realignment was not disclosed, it is understood that at least 10,000 US troops would remain in Okinawa, as agreed under the original pact. Some of the US troops removed from Okinawa are expected to be rotated through US bases elsewhere in the region, like the ones in Australia, Hawaii and the Philippines.
"Rather than choosing an option where nothing moves forward, I took a step, under Prime Minister (Yoshihiko) Noda's guidance, to first realize the reduction of burden on people in Okinawa," Japanese Foreign Minister Koichiro Gemba said at a news conference held after Wednesday's meeting in Washington.
"We decided to choose to reduce Okinawa's burden as much as possible rather than being stuck in a stalemate by sticking to an earlier package," he said, adding: "America is also committed, but Japan must take the lead in resolving this issue."
Meanwhile, Pentagon Press Secretary George Little in a statement said the latest agreement to delink the troop removal from the air station relocation allows both countries to "work the details of and make progress on each effort separately, yet we remain fully and equally committed to both efforts."
He added that the two nations would engage in further talks to "determine the next steps to mitigate the impact of the Marine presence on the Okinawan people, develop Guam as a strategic hub with an operational Marine Corps presence on Guam; and maintain a presence in the region that is geographically distributed, operationally resilient, and politically sustainable."
Japan's key security ally since the end of World War II, the U.S. currently has about 47,000 troops stationed in that country, more than half of them based in Okinawa prefecture, a chain of small subtropical islands about 1,600 kilometers south-west of Tokyo.
Okinawa's residents have long been critical of the US military presence on their island due to noise, pollution associated with the air base, as well as crimes committed by American troops on the island, including the rape of a school-girl in 1995.
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