US, Japan to discuss US troop presence

NEW YORK (AFP) - – The Obama administration has promised to discuss a controversial deal on US military bases with Japan's new left-leaning government but stopped short of saying it would renegotiate it.

The administration also sought to get off to "a good start" with Prime Minister Yukio Hatoyama's government as Secretary of State Hillary ClintonHillary Clinton held her first meeting with her Japanese counterpart Katsuya Okada.

Clinton's assistant secretary of state for public affairs, Philip Crowley, told reporters Monday that the top US diplomat and Okada agreed there would be more discussions on an existing plan for the troop presence on the southern island of Okinawa.

"The new government has questions about this plan, and the secretary pledged that we would continue the discussions with the new government and to answer any question that they might have," Crowley said.

"There is a plan, clearly we're going to have discussions about it but where the discussions go, at this point I can't predict," Crowley said.

State Department spokesman Ian Kelly said August 31 that the United States would not revisit a deal finalized just months ago by Japan's long-ruling conservatives that also includes moving troops to the US territory of Guam.

After exhaustive negotiations, former president George W. Bush's administration agreed to dismantle the Futenma Marine base and shift the facilities to reclaimed land in a quiet part of Okinawa.

Some Okinawan activists -- backed by Hatoyama's Democratic Party while in opposition -- want the United States to remove the base from Okinawa completely.

Clinton looked forward to working with Okada in order to build a stronger partnership with Japan, an alliance she called a "cornerstone" of US foreign policy and "indispensable to the security and prosperity of the Asia Pacific."

Clinton, in New York for the United Nations general assembly meeting this week, held talks with Okada after dispatching her top official on the region to meet with the new Japanese government.

Kurt Campbell, assistant secretary of state for East Asia and Pacific affairs, said Monday that the United States wants "to underscore how important it is for us to get off to a good start in the US-Japanese relationship."

Campbell said he had promised that the United States would listen to how Tokyo now intends to undertake a review in the relationship.

"We told our Japanese friends how we're going to conduct our business in public. We are going to be very clear about how important it is to respect each other as equals," he said.

"The United States intends to underscore its support of a strong and independent Japanese foreign policy," Campbell said.

But he added that in private the US administration would "underscore areas where we think continuity on policy is important."

Okinawa, he said, is one such area.

US President Barack ObamaBarack Obama will meet with Hatoyama for the first time on Wednesday on the sidelines of the UN general assembly.

Hatoyama was sworn in as prime minister last week after his center-left Democratic Party of Japan (DPJ) won the country's elections by a landslide.

The DPJ's victory ended more than half a century of almost unbroken rule by the conservative Liberal Democratic Party (LDP), and party leaders have already signaled they want a "more equal" relationship with the United States.

The new coalition government sworn in Wednesday is seeking to strike a balance between the demands of some of its own left-leaning and pacifist members, and the desire to maintain the traditionally strong US alliance.