Japanese Prime Minister Yukio Hatoyama is to ask Washington for fresh talks to solve a festering row over a controversial US military base, reports said Sunday.
The question of where to relocate an Okinawa island Marine Corps airbase has soured Washington-Tokyo ties since a new centre-left government took power in Japan in September.
The request could further irritate the United States, which has pushed Japan to implement a 2006 pact under which the base would be moved from a city area to a coastal region of Okinawa, local media said.
But Hatoyama wants to find a new location for Futenma Air Station after spending months studying the agreement, Jiji Press said, citing unnamed official sources.
The scheduled base relocation, agreed while previous conservative governments were in power in both countries, is part of a wider agreement to rejig the American troop presence in Japan.
Hatoyama wants to review the entire agreement, including speeding up a plan to transfer 8,000 US Marines from Okinawa to Guam, the Yomiuri Shimbun newspaper said.
Hatoyama and some members of his coalition government, which came to power in September, have rankled US officials by announcing the review and remaining vague about their policy direction.
The Japanese premier has left open the possibility of moving the base off the island or even out of the country, to lighten the burden on Okinawa, which hosts more than half of the 47,000 US troops based in Japan.
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