(AFP) U.S. Senate Moves to Freeze Japan Base Move - Defense News

U.S. Senate Moves to Freeze Japan Base Move - Defense News


AGENCE FRANCE-PRESSE

Published: 18 Jun 2011 11:21

WASHINGTON - U.S. senators said June 17 that they have taken a major step to halt a controversial military base plan on Japan's Okinawa Island and called on the Pentagon to make a fresh assessment.

Brushing aside insistence by the two governments that plans should go ahead, the Senate Armed Services Committee agreed to bar any funds to move troops from Japan to Guam and ordered a new study on Okinawa's flashpoint Futenma base.

The language was part of an annual defense funding act approved June 16.

It needs approval from the full Senate and House of Representatives, but senators involved said that their actions on Asian bases enjoyed broad support.

Sen. Carl Levin, a member of President Barack Obama's Democratic Party who heads the committee, said that the base plan in Japan increasingly appeared unfeasible and that the United States needed to control costs.

"This is a major step to put all these changes on hold and to require some analysis of cost and to take an honest look at what the current plans are and what the alternatives are," Levin told reporters on a conference call.

The Senate intervened even though the Obama administration had put its foot down with Japan, insisting that the base plan could not be changed. One Japanese prime minister, Yukio Hatoyama, resigned last year after failing to fulfill campaign promises to come up with a new plan on the Futenma base.

"I think people have kind of hidden their heads in the sand because everyone just says, 'We've got a plan, we're going to keep going.' But the problem is the current plan isn't affordable, it's not workable," Levin said.

Okinawa is home to around half of the 47,000 U.S. troops stationed in Japan under a post-World War II security treaty. Futenma, a Marine Corps air station, is a particular source of grievance as it lies in what has become a crowded urban area.

Under a 2006 plan first approved by President George W. Bush's administration and a previous conservative government in Japan, the United States would close Futenma and move its aircraft to an isolated beach elsewhere in Okinawa. Some 8,000 Marines would leave Okinawa for Guam, a U.S. territory, in 2014.

The Senate bill prohibits funds for the Marine move until commanders provide an updated plan for Guam - where public support has been dwindling - and the Defense Department certifies "tangible progress" on the Futenma riddle.

Amid a push by lawmakers to tame a soaring debt, the Senate committee also cut $150 million during the year starting in October for projects linked to the shift to Guam.

The bill requires the Defense Department to study an alternative, drafted by Democratic Sen. Jim Webb of Virginia, to close and return Futenma's real estate and move its air assets to Okinawa's existing Kadena Air Base.

Under Webb's proposal, some air assets would be moved from Kadena to other parts of Japan and Guam - a solution he argued would reduce both congestion and costs.

"These recommendations are workable, cost-effective, will reduce the burden on the Okinawan people and will strengthen the American contribution to the security of the region," Webb, a former combat Marine who heads a subcommittee on East Asia, said in a statement.

In South Korea, the Senate bill would end funding obligations for troops to bring their families. Starting in 2007, military commanders have allowed many of the 28,500 troops stationed in South Korea to be accompanied.

A recent study by the non-partisan Government Accountability Office said that the Defense Department did not sufficiently study the costs of the change, which could total $22 billion through 2050.

The Senate bill does not freeze the overall base shift in South Korea, as initially proposed by Webb, Levin and Republican Sen. John McCain who voiced concern about mounting costs.

The U.S. military plans to start shifting next year to a base in the city of Pyeongtaek, eventually closing the huge Yongsan base in Seoul which was set up for the 1950-53 Korean War but now lies in the heart of a bustling metropolis.