Obama urges Japan to keep US bases pact

TOKYO (AFP) – US President Barack Obama urged Japan's new centre-left government on Tuesday to keep a pact allowing US bases on its territory, as both sides laid the groundwork for his visit to Tokyo this week.

Obama also said he wanted to one day become the first sitting US president to visit the nuclear-bombed cities of Hiroshima and Nagasaki, while Japan said it would help the US effort in Afghanistan with five billion dollars in aid.

On the sensitive security issues, Obama said he understood Prime Minister Yukio Hatoyama's government wanted to review the two nations' post-war security alliance after it ended five decades of conservative rule in September.

But he insisted it was in Japan's best interests to keep the bases.

"Prime Minister Hatoyama was leading a movement of change in Japan that really was unprecedented. It was a political earthquake there," Obama told NHK television in an exclusive interview broadcast Tuesday in Tokyo.

"I think that it is perfectly appropriate for the new government to want to reexamine how to move forward in a new environment.

"(But) I'm confident that, once the review is completed, they will conclude that the alliance that we have, the base arrangements that have been discussed, all those things, serve the interest of Japan and that they will continue."

Hatoyama's government has said it is reviewing a 2006 agreement under which a new US base would be built on the southern island of Okinawa, where more than 20,000 people protested Sunday against the large US military presence.

The premier has said that the Marine Corps Futenma Air Base -- now located in a crowded urban area, to the chagrin of residents -- may not be relocated to a coastal area as previously agreed but moved off Okinawa or even out of Japan.

Both countries agreed to set up a ministerial-level working group on the issue, Foreign Minister Katsuya Okada said before leaving for Singapore where he was due to meet US Secretary of State Hillary Clinton Wednesday.

Anti-base sentiment could rise further after news Tuesday that the US military in Okinawa had detained a serviceman over a hit-and-run accident Saturday that killed a 66-year-old local man.

Hatoyama said he wanted the US side to hand the suspect over to police.

Okinawans -- many of whom believe the island carries an unfair burden in hosting more than half of the 47,000 US troops in Japan -- have in the past protested strongly against crimes committed by American service personnel.

While Hatoyama has expressed admiration for Obama and echoed his message of change, he has also vowed that his own government, including left-leaning and pacifist factions, would take a less subservient stance toward Washington.

His party, which in opposition criticised Japan's previous rulers for abetting "American wars," has said it will end a naval refuelling mission next year that has backed the NATO-led Afghanistan campaign since 2001.

However the Hatoyama government has offered to boost aid to Afghanistan, and on Tuesday pledged to give five billion dollars worth of social, agricultural and other assistance for the war-torn country over the next five years.

In a phone call with Hatoyama, Obama discussed Afghanistan, climate change and other global issues, said Japan's top government spokesman Hirofumi Hirano.

Hatoyama, who studied at California's Stanford University in the 1970s, has often stressed areas in which Tokyo and Washington could cooperate, including in working toward the goal of a world free of nuclear weapons.

Obama said in a speech in Prague this year that the United States had "a moral responsibility" to work toward the eventual abolition of nuclear arms.

Speaking on NHK, the US president said he was willing to visit the nuclear-bombed cities of Hiroshima and Nagasaki while in office, but that he would not have time to go there during his Japan visit Friday and Saturday.

"The memories of Hiroshima and Nagasaki are etched in the minds of the world, and I would be honoured to have the opportunity to visit those cities at some point during my presidency," Obama said in the interview.

Obama would be the first US president in office to visit the cities, which the United States attacked with atomic bombs in the final days of World War II, killing more than 210,000 people and forcing Japan's surrender.