Clinton cancels meeting with Japanese counterpart
- Source: Global Times
- [12:35 November 04 2009]
- Comments
A scheduled meeting planned this week between US Secretary of State Hillary Clinton and her Japanese counterpart has been postponed, the US State Department said Monday.
A revised schedule of Clinton's activities made public late Saturday night dropped any mention of a previously set meeting with Katsuya Okada in Washington on Friday.
Japan Today, a Tokyo-based newspaper, said the US apparently "jumped the gun" to cancel the meeting when Japan had only said that Okada hadn't decided whether to travel to the US, despite his desire to do so.
Clinton's talks with Okada were to come ahead of US President Barack Obama's first official visit to Japan on November 12-13, and also amid a row over the planned relocation of a controversial US base in Japan.
Japanese Prime Minister Yukio Hatoyama, who took office in September, has pledged to review a 2006 agreement to relocate the US Marine Corps' Futenma Air Base from an urban area to a coastal part of the southern island of Okinawa.
Hatoyama has suggested that the base – which has angered residents because of aircraft noise and friction with US servicemen – could be moved off the island altogether, a move Washington has strongly opposed.
US Defense Secretary Robert Gates has bluntly pressed Washington's ally to "move on" quickly with the previously agreed plans to move Futenma operations to the coastal area near the US Camp Schwab site in central Okinawa.
The US, which defeated Japan in World War II and then occupied the country, now has about 47,000 soldiers stationed there, more than half of them on Okinawa, the site of one of the war's bloodiest battles.
Okada has said the Futenma Air Base should not be moved off Okinawa but could be merged with the Kadena Air Base – another US facility on the island – possibly angering both Washington and residents.
Meanwhile, the city of Nago, Okinawa, which had agreed to accept new US facilities to replace the Futenma Air Base under the existing plans, is now considering whether to rescind its decision, the Yomiuri Daily reported Monday.
Local officials told the newspaper that they had a sense of mistrust toward Hotoyama's government over the change of policy after the city's "difficult decision" to accept the base.
Agencies
