窮小子冷眼輯

In Tokyo, Obama Makes Concession on Marine Base

 The New York Times

President Barack Obama and Prime Minister Yukio Hatoyama of Japan during a joint press conference in Tokyo on Friday. Published: November 13, 2009

TOKYO — President Obama, seeking to mend fences with Japan, America’s most important Asian ally, announced on Friday that he would establish a high-level working group on the contentious issue of the continuing presence of a Marine base in Okinawa.

The decision, announced at a news conference just a few hours after he touched down in Tokyo to begin his first presidential trip to Asia, appears to represent a concession by the Obama administration to at least consider Japan’s concerns.

It comes less than a month after Defense Secretary Robert M. Gates seemed to shut the door on renegotiating a deal reached in 2006 to relocate the United States Marine air base in Futenma to a less populated part of the island.

Mr. Obama’s visit comes at a time when the two allies are grappling with recent shifts in their overall relationship and Japan’s newly elected prime minister, Yukio Hatoyama, searches for a more “equal partnership.

” On Friday, both leaders emphasized the importance of the relationship, and stressed that the two sides were seeing eye to eye.

Standing beside Mr. Obama at the Japanese equivalent of the White House, the Kantei, Mr. Hatoyama said, “We’ve come to call each other Barack and Yukio, and gotten quite accustomed to calling each other by our names.”

But White House officials said that the United States had agreed only to talks “on the implementation” of the Okinawa agreement, and said they did not expect to alter the larger shape of the agreement, which also calls for relocating about 8,000 Marines to Guam.

Japan policy experts indicated that the establishment of the working group is likely only a face-saving way for Mr. Hatoyama to tell the Japanese public that he is keeping his campaign promise.

“It is a fact that we did campaign on this issue, and the Okinawans do have high expectations,” Mr. Hatoyama said, in explaining why his government was intent on reopening the subject.

“It will be a very difficult issue to resolve, but as time goes by, it would become even more difficult.”

The United States also appeared to give ground on the other contentious security alliance issue, accepting Mr. Hatoyama’s pledge of $5 billion in aid to Afghanistan, which Mr. Hatoyama linked to his government’s decision to end the Japanese Navy’s refueling mission near Afghanistan.

Mr. Obama said the promise “underscores Japan ’s prominent role” in the broad international effort in Afghanistan.

Still, there have been ample signs that the half-century alliance may be entering a new phase.

In the past, squabbles between the United States and Japan have focused mostly on trade disputes over luxury cars and semiconductors, while the security alliance between the two was more stable.

Now, things appeared to have flipped, with the most contentious part of the relationship falling squarely in the security arena, and, more specifically, on the United States Marine bases at Futenma and elsewhere in Okinawa, the southern island that is home to about two-thirds of the 37,000 shore-based United States military personnel in Japan.

In 2006 the United States agreed to rebase thousands of soldiers to Guam, and to move the Marine base elsewhere on Okinawa. But Mr. Hatoyama campaigned for office on a pledge to move the airfield off Okinawa.

During his visit to Tokyo, one of President Obama’s most pressing tasks will be improving communication with Japan’s new outspoken government and patching up ties between the two longtime allies, which have hit their lowest point in years.

Political experts and local media now speak of a communication gap opening between Washington and Tokyo, which has led to what they call excessive concerns in Washington that Japan may try to alter the two nations’ postwar military alliance.

Political experts say Tokyo and Washington are actually a lot closer together on bilateral issues than they may realize, and Japan cannot afford to alienate a protector upon whom it still relies for its security in a geopolitical neighborhood that includes a fast-rising China and a nuclear-armed North Korea.

But they say relations have fallen into a vicious cycle in which Tokyo sends conflicting signals, and Washington makes matters worse by raising public pressure.

These experts criticize Mr. Hatoyama for failing to clarify his government’s actual intentions as it speaks of ending Japan ’s overdependence on Washington and reorienting toward Asia.

They point to Mr. Hatoyama’s delays in making a clear stance on contentious issues like the marine air base on Okinawa , which now says he will decide in January after local elections.

“There are too many places where we don’t know what the new government really wants,” said Yasunori Sone, a professor of political and policy analysis at Keio University in Tokyo. “Their public relations has been poor.”

At the same time, these experts also blame the Obama administration for overreacting to what they say is essentially language aimed at a domestic audience and failing to see that Tokyo ’s new government has little stomach for making big changes to the alliance.

“This is Washington ’s projection of anxiety onto a new government in Tokyo that is talking about changing the status quo,” said Kiichi Fujiwara, a professor of international relations at the University of Tokyo.

“Pushing the new government is not the best way to handle things.”

Mr. Fujiwara and others said part of the problem was the Obama administration was pushing Japan’s new government too hard, too early, and not giving it time to work out its policy stances. Japanese officials, in Washington last month to prepare for Mr. Obama’s trip, told their American counterparts and foreign policy experts to try to give the new Japanese government time to get its house in order, and asked them not push Japan too hard right off the back.

Instead, the two sides should shift the discussion to focus on issues on which the two sides can more easily agree, such as the environment or nuclear proliferation, Mr. Fujiwara said.

“Diving right into the most contentious issues was not the right first step,” he said.

Political experts here said that Mr. Hatoyama’s more assertive tone reflected the widely held feeling here that Japan has been too meek in its ties with Washington.

At the same time, they said, public opinion in Japan still remains firmly behind the alliance, which has served Japan well since World War II.

The American frustration over the Hatoyama government’s refusal to back down from the campaign pledges on the Okinawa base came to a head when Secretary Gates visited Tokyo in October.

Mr. Gates, known for speaking bluntly, pressed Mr. Hatoyama and Japanese military officials to keep their commitment on the military agreements.

“It’s time to move on,” Mr. Gates said, calling Japanese proposals to reopen the base issue “counterproductive.

” Then, adding insult to injury in the eyes of Japanese commentators, Mr. Gates turned down invitations to attend a welcoming ceremony at the Defense Ministry and to dine with officials there.

Mr. Obama will try to make up for some of the ensuing upset. One his agenda Friday night: dinner with Mr. Hatoyama.