04 March 2016•Update: 04 March 2016
TOKYO
Japan’s prime minister announced Friday that a long-running legal feud between Tokyo and a southern prefecture over a plan to relocate a United States Marine Corps base within Okinawa had ended with both opting for a court-mediated settlement plan.
Shinzo Abe told reporters that the central government would suspend construction to build a replacement facility as part of the process of moving Futenma Air Station from densely populated Ginowan city to reclaimed land on the less populated shore of Henoko.
"As the current situation shows, the state and Okinawa Prefecture have waged a legal battle in an endless manner," Kyodo news agency quoted him as saying.
"If such a relation continues, [the dispute] will end up being deadlocked and the situation of the Futenma base -- surrounded by homes and schools and situated right in a populated area -- will be kept fixed for years," he warned.
Abe stressed the need for a "peaceful settlement" of the matter after Okinawa -- whose governor Takeshi Onaga wants the base moved out of the prefecture -- exhibited a positive stance on the settlement plan.
The central government said Abe and Onaga are set to hold talks in the capital later in the day, according to Kyodo.
Okinawa and Tokyo have been trying to undermine each other’s efforts over the Futenma Air Station since early 2015 when Onaga revoked a landfill approval by his predecessor.
The land minister responded by overruling the move in October, prompting the government of Okinawa -- which has the highest poverty rate among Japan’s prefectures -- to submit a complaint to the Central and Local Government Dispute Management Council the following month.
Additional suits have been filed since.
The people of Okinawa have long felt oppressed by hosting around two-thirds of the entire U.S. military establishment in Japan since the end of World War II, and Onaga won the gubernatorial election in Nov. 2014 with a pledge to oppose the base relocation.
In addition to complaints about the number of U.S. troops, residents are concerned that the relocation could have a negative impact on the environment of Henoko -- including the coral reefs in the area -- and result in noise pollution.
For its part, the central government argues that U.S. bases, including the new one at Henoko which authorities call the "most dangerous airfield in the world", are necessary for maintaining the Japan-U.S. alliance.
In December, Japan’s Cabinet approved a record defense budget of around $42 billion for the 2016 fiscal year, under which nearly $495 million was set aside for the relocation of the Okinawa base.
