Japan says US ties firm

US-Japan ties have been frayed by the dispute over the US Marines’
Futenma airbase on the southern island of Okinawa since Prime Minister
Yukio Hatoyama took office in September pledging to steer a diplomatic
course less dependent on Washington and to improve ties with China.

Concerns that Hatoyama is mismanaging the US alliance have also eroded
the government’s popularity ratings, which have sunk to around 50
percent ahead of a mid-year election that his Democratic Party needs to
win to pass bills smoothly and avoid policy paralysis.

“From the United States, there is a view that Japan is cosying up to
China and distancing itself from the United States. It’s as if three
people were competing over which two are lovers,” said Foreign Minister
Katsuya Okada.

“I think that is an unproductive way of looking at it. It’s not a
question of choosing one over the other,” he told reporters in an
interview.

“China, especially its economy, is very important for both Japan and
the United States, but it has a different political system, so
fundamentally it is not an ally,” he said.

Okada said Japan was committed to resolving the Futenma dispute by May
– when Hatoyama might visit the US – and denied that a delay in
deciding had undermined Japanese voter support for the Hatoyama
government.

“I do not think that because of the Futenma issue we have lost the
people’s confidence. We have to reach a conclusion and that conclusion
must be one that is persuasive to the public. That is why we are taking
time,” said Okada, a former leader of Hatoyama’s Democratic Party.

“All we can do is stick to our stance of deciding by May.”

Alliance without US troops unthinkable
Washington wants Tokyo to stick to a 2006 deal to relocate Futenma’s
facilities to a less crowded part of Okinawa as a prerequisite for
shifting up to 8,000 Marines to the US territory of Guam, part of a
broader realignment of US forces.

But Hatoyama said ahead of the August election that swept his party to
power that it would be better if the base were moved off Okinawa. His
tiny coalition partner, the Social Democratic Party, is insisting he
stick to that stance.

The ruling Democratic Party has a huge majority in parliament’s lower
house, but needs the backing of the Social Democrats and another small
coalition partner to get bills through the upper house, which can delay
legislation.

US Secretary of State Hillary Clinton urged Japan at talks with Okada
in Hawaii to implement the 2006 plan, but the two vowed not to let the
row derail the security alliance in the face of growing Chinese power.

They also kicked off discussions about the future of the alliance, long
seen by many as vital to security in a region home to an unpredictable
North Korea and a rising China.

Okada said arriving at a common understanding of China’s role in the
region would be one key task for those talks, which could be wrapped up
when President Obama visits Japan for an Asia-Pacific summit in
November.

He added the alliance was unthinkable without stationing US troops in
Japan, despite suggestions by some Japanese experts that the US
military presence is outdated.

“The framework of the security treaty is that the United States has the
responsibility to protect Japan while Japan hosts the [US] bases,
including for the sake of the Asia-Pacific region, and without the
permanent stationing of US troops, it would be truly one-sided … so
that is unthinkable,” Okada said.

“But efforts to reduce the volume of the bases or rectify the concentration in Okinawa will be sought in future,” he said.

Okinawa, some 1,600 km south of Tokyo, is reluctant host to about half
the 47,000 US military personnel in Japan and many residents resent
what they see as an unfair burden for maintaining the US-Japan security
alliance.