Japan, US agree on funding for troop realignment

TOKYO, Apr 24 (Reuters) Japan and the United States have reached an agreement on the touchy issue of funding the relocation of US Marines to Guam, Japanese Chief Cabinet Secretary Shinzo Abe said today.

The agreement paves the way for wrapping up a plan to realign the approximately 50,000 US military personnel in Japan, part of Washington's global strategy to make its forces more flexible to meet modern threats. The two governments had sought to reach a deal on how to pay for the move by March 31, but they missed that deadline.

Japanese Defence Minister Fukushiro Nukaga and US Secretary of Defense Donald Rumsfeld clinched the deal after several hours of talks in Washington yesterday.

Japan will fund 6.09 billion dollars, 59 per cent of the total cost of moving 8,000 Marines from the southern island of Okinawa to Guam, Abe told a news conference.

''One big goal of this realignment was to reduce the burden on the people of Okinawa, and our thought is to carry this out as quickly as possible,'' Abe told a news conference.

''Our burden was unavoidable in order to speed up the process.'' The United States had originally wanted Japan to pay 75 per cent of the estimated 10.5 billion dollars cost, but Tokyo wanted to keep its share to less than half with many voters and lawmakers in opposition given the country's already huge public debt.

Rumsfeld said in a statement that the two nations ''have come to an understanding that we both feel is in the best interests of our two countries.'' Okinawa is host to about half the US military personnel in Japan, and many residents resent bearing what they say is an unfair burden for the key US-Japan security alliance.

A prerequisite for moving the Marines from Okinawa was a controversial plan to relocate the Marines' Futenma air base from a crowded part of Okinawa to an area further north.

The United States signed off on the plan earlier this month after a local mayor agreed to a slightly revised plan to address complaints about noise and safety, ending a decade of often fraught negotiations.

Japan's portion of the funding will be used to help build housing and schools for the troops and their families, as well as infrastructure for their power and water supplies, Abe said.

He added that the details of the financing still had to be worked out, but that the government has no plan at the moment to draw up an extra budget or use the nation's foreign reserves.

Affected Japanese communities in Okinawa and elsewhere are against parts of the realignment plan due to worries about the noise, crime and environmental damage that they associate with the US bases.

In one sign of such opposition, a candidate against plans to expand a US Marine base in the western city of Iwakuni beat a candidate backed by the ruling Liberal Democratic Party in a mayoral election yesterday.

REUTERS CH KN1059