AGENCE FRANCE-PRESSE ,
TOKYO: A Japanese mayor has said he is leaning toward dropping objections to his city hosting the first US nuclear-powered warship in Japan after Washington offered safety assurances.
The US Navy wants to station the USS George Washington in Japan from 2008, the first time a US nuclear-powered aircraft carrier has been based overseas, raising protests in the only nation to have suffered nuclear attacks.
Yokosuka Mayor Ryoichi Kabaya, whose city on Tokyo Bay hosts the largest US Navy base in Japan, said he was impressed by a 10-page fact sheet on safety drafted by the United States on the request of the community.
“The report is more concrete and detailed than we had expected,” Kabaya told reporters late Monday.
“Although there remains the issue of protective measures in the event of natural disasters, we could possibly move toward accepting the nuclear-powered ship,” he said.
The US military wants to replace the conventional USS Kitty Hawk with the nuclear-powered George Washington, saying it must send the best quality ships to East Asia due to the unpredictable security environment.
Prime Minister Junichiro Koizumi, who represents Yokosuka in parliament, has already approved the plan, but local residents including the mayor had pledged to fight hosting the nuclear carrier.
The safety report, handed over Monday by US Ambassador Thomas Schieffer to the foreign ministry, gives details on the operation of the USS George Washington and on the potential impact to the environment and crew members.
It said the carrier is 10 times sturdier than US commercial nuclear power plants in withstanding the shocks of earthquakes — a major concern in Japan which endures 20 percent of the world's major tremors.
The USS George Washington deployment is separate from a plan on realigning US troops in Japan over which the allies have held protracted negotiations, mostly over how to share the cost.
A key local leader also dropped objections to the realignment plan after talks with the Tokyo government.
US troops are based in Japan under a security alliance after Tokyo lost World War II and was forced to renounce the right to a military.
