TOKYO: Japan's Prime Minister Yoshihiko Noda flew to Okinawa on Sunday on a tough mission to persuade local islanders to accept a plan to move a controversial US military base to another part of the island.
On his first visit to the subtropical island chain in the East China Sea since taking office last September, Noda was due to meet Okinawa's governor Hirokazu Nakaima on Monday.
But Nakaima has already vowed to reject the long-stalled plan as he demanded the base the Futenma marine corps air station be moved out of Okinawa to help reduce a huge US military presence there.
The island group, where fierce battles were fought in the closing days of World War II, erupted in massive anti-base protests after the rape of a 12-year-old Okinawan girl by three US servicemen in 1995.
The protests led the US government to pledge efforts to realign the US forces and reduce burdens on Okinawa.
But successive Tokyo governments have faced strong objections from islanders to an agreement with Washington to relocate the Futenma base from a growing urban area to a scenic coral seashore on the main Okinawan island.
The Okinawa governor told the Defence Ministry last week that it would be impossible to protect the environment around the envisaged relocation site under the current plan.
The relocation of Futenma had been part of a 2006 Japan-US agreement which also included redeployment of some US marines stationed in Okinawa to Guam.
But the two countries agreed earlier this month that they would delink the Futenma issue from the planned transfer of about 8,000 marines from Okinawa to Guam.
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