Agence France-Presse,
Washington: The United States and Japan agreed Saturday to sharply cut US forces in Okinawa, deploy a powerful missile defense radar in Japan and tighten army ties in a major realignment of the main US military alliance in Asia.
The United States will move 7,000 marines from Okinawa to Guam, reducing its force on the island to 11,000, Japanese defense chief Yoshinori Ohno said. US officials said they hope to accomplish the move within six years.
Japan, in turn, committed to an expansion in the roles and missions of its military both in the defense of Japan and in international missions that do not involve the use of force.
“I believe we are in fact opening a new era,” Ohno said at a news conference here with US Defense Secretary Donald Rumsfeld, Secretary of State Condoleezza Rice and Japanese Foreign Minister Nobutaka Machimura.
“We are now talking about joint activities in various areas between Japan and the United States in order to improve the peace and security around the world,” he said.
The ministers endorsed a 14-page document entitled “US-Japan Alliance: Transformation and Realignment for the Future” that lays out broad plans for revamping the alliance. They agreed to work out implementation of the plans by March.
“Change is always hard,” Rumsfeld said. “The task now is to see to the implementation in a way that is satisfactory from everyone's standpoint.”
US defense officials said this is one of the biggest changes in the defense relationship between the two countries since the end of World War II.
It comes amid tensions with North Korea over its nuclear weapons programs and growing concern over China's military buildup that the Pentagon has said threatens the military balance in the region.
The document said the two countries “reemphasized the persistent challenges in the Asia-Pacific region that create unpredictability and uncertainty and underscored the need to pay attention to the modernization of military capabilities in the region.”
Japan agreed to intensified cooperation in missile defense, including the deployment on its territory of an X-band radar, a powerful radar used to track and target intercontinental ballistic missile warheads in space.
The US military and the Japanese Self-Defense Forces also plan to develop a “common operational picture” with US and Japanese command centers co-located at Yokota Air Base in Japan, it said.
Close and continuous coordination at every level is “essential to dissuade destabilizing military build-ups, to deter aggression and to respond to diverse security challenges,” the report said.
The two countries agreed on the need to intensify bilateral contingency planning and include Japan's civilian agencies and local authorities in the process.
They also agreed to share real-time intelligence, expand joint training and share facilities both inside and outside Japan.
Japan will strengthen its military to address “new threats and diverse contingencies such as ballistic missile attacks, attacks by guerrilla and special forces and invasion of remote islands,” the document said.
The plans also call for a series of force realignments beyond Okinawa, including the eventual relocation of the headquarters of the US Army's I Corps from Fort Lewis, Washington to Japan, US officials said.
The US Army, meanwhile, will convert its command structure in Japan into a deployable joint task force headquarters, which could be co-located with a Japanese defense forces “central readiness force command” at Camp Zama.
The Japanese air defense command would be co-located with the US air defense command at Yokota Air Base. A US carrier airwing will be moved from Atsugi Naval Air Station to Marine Corps Air Station Iwakuni.
The US Navy announced this week that a nuclear-powered aircraft carrier will be stationed in Japan for the first time in 2008, when the USS Kitty Hawk returns to the United States for decommissioning.
The cost of most of the changes will be paid by Japan, including the development of basing infrastructure in Guam to receive the marines moving from Okinawa, officials said.
Ohno said funding requirements will be substantial, but that Japan considered it worthwhile.
In addition to the reduction in the marine force on Okinawa, the United States has agreed to relocate a marine air base at Futenma from the crowded urban center of Ginowan to the Marine Corps' Camp Schwab.
