The U.S. is trying to bully the new government in Japan into accepting the expansion of the military base in Henoko.
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Friday, December 4, 2009
U.S. presses Japan to resolve Okinawa base dispute ‘expeditiously’
By Blaine Harden and John Pomfret
Washington Post
TOKYO — U.S. Ambassador John Roos said Friday the Obama administration expects the new government of Japan to move quickly to resolve a dispute over the location of a U.S. Marine air station on Okinawa — an issue that has become a sore point in the security relationship between the countries.
“It is important that we resolve the current issues expeditiously,” said Roos, in his first public speech in Japan since he arrived three months ago as an Obama appointee. He used the word “expeditiously” twice, the same word President Obama used repeatedly when he visited Japan last month and called for prompt action on the base controversy.
But the government of Prime Minister Yukio Hatoyama, which is less than three months old and already scrambling to hold together its ruling coalition, made clear this week that it has no intention of meeting the Americans’ hurry-up-and-decide demands.
“We are not discussing this on the premise that it has to be decided by the end of the year,” Hatoyama told reporters.
The southern island of Okinawa hosts most of the 36,000 U.S. military personnel based in Japan, and the Futenma Marine air station, located in a densely populated part of the island, has become a symbol of the noise, pollution and crime that many Japanese associate with the American military presence.
Hatoyama’s Democratic Party of Japan (DPJ) won an election and put together a ruling coalition by promising to end a decades-old pattern of “passive” behavior by Japan in its dealings with the United States, its most important ally and second-largest trading partner.
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