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TOKYO : The top US military officer on Friday kicked off a series of talks in Japan, government officials said, as their decades-long alliance is being strained by a military base dispute.
Admiral Michael Mullen, chairman of the US joint chiefs of staff, held a closed-door meeting with his Japanese counterpart Ryoichi Oriki following a welcome ceremony at the defence ministry in central Tokyo.
Mullen was then scheduled to hold separate talks with Defence Minister Toshimi Kitazawa and Foreign Minister Katsuya Okada.
His visit came after US Defence Secretary Robert Gates bluntly pressed Japan's new centre-left government Wednesday to "move on" quickly with previously agreed plans to build a new US airbase on southern Okinawa island.
Okada, speaking on Japanese television Thursday, said "I don't think we will act simply by accepting what the US tells us, just because the US is saying this, in such a short period of time."
Prime Minister Yukio Hatoyama, also brushing aside the US pressure, suggested again on Friday that the issue may not be resolved before President Barack Obama's visit on November 12-13.
Asked about how quickly he was seeking to resolve the contentious issue, he told reporters: "We're only just getting started. We don't have to be in a hurry."
The Hatoyama administration has said it will review an agreement to close the US Marine Corps' Futenma Air Base, located in a crowded urban area, and then build a new base in a coastal area of Okinawa by 2014.
The government has suggested the base could be moved off the island instead, or even out of Japan.
The issue has clouded the US-Japan security alliance since Hatoyama took power in Tokyo five weeks ago, vowing a less subservient relationship with Washington after half a century of conservative rule.
The United States, which defeated Japan in World War II and then occupied the country, now has 47,000 troops stationed there, more than half of them on Okinawa, the site of one of the bloodiest battles of the war.
Their presence has often caused friction with the local community, especially when American servicemen have committed crimes.
- AFP
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