TOKYO – Japan’s foreign minister on Thursday shrugged off suggestions that Tokyo was cozying up to China at the expense of its alliance with the United States and repeated a vow to settle a feud over a U.S. airbase by May.
U.S.-Japan ties have been frayed by the dispute over the U.S. Marines’ Futenma airbase on the southern island of Okinawa since Prime Minister Yukio Hatoyama took office in September pledging to steer a diplomatic course less dependent on Washington and to improve ties with China.
Concerns that Hatoyama is mismanaging the U.S. alliance have also eroded the government’s public support ratings, which have sunk to around 50 percent ahead of a mid-year election.
“From the United States, there is a view that Japan is cozying up to China and distancing itself from the United States. It’s as if three people were competing over which two are lovers,” Foreign Minister Katsuya Okada told Reuters.
“I think that is an unproductive way of looking at it. It’s not a question of choosing one over the other,” Okada said in an interview. “China, especially its economy, is very important for both Japan and the United States, but it has a different political system, so fundamentally it is not an ally.”
Okada, back on Wednesday from talks in Hawaii with U.S. Secretary of State Hillary Clinton, said Japan was committed to resolving the Futenma dispute by May and denied that a delay in deciding had undermined voter support for the government.
“I do not think that because of the Futenma issue we have lost the people’s confidence. We have to reach a conclusion and that conclusion must be one that is persuasive to the public. That is why we are taking time,” he said.
“All we can do is stick to our stance of deciding by May.”
Washington wants Tokyo to stick to a 2006 deal to relocate Futenma’s facilities to a less crowded part of Okinawa as a prerequisite for shifting up to 8,000 Marines to the U.S. territory of Guam.
But Hatoyama said ahead of the August election that swept his party to power that it would be better if the base were moved off Okinawa, and his tiny coalition partner, the Social Democratic Party, is insisting he stick to that stance.
(Editing by Hugh Lawson)
