U.S. and Japanese officials said Monday that they plan to speed up negotiations over the relocation of a key Marine base ahead of President Barack Obama's visit to Tokyo next month, according to AP. The fate of the U.S. Marine Corps' Futenma Air Station on the southern Japanese island of Okinawa has dragged on for years. Residents at both its current location and a planned new spot nearby say U.S. military bases are very loud and lead to increased crime. Some members of Japanese Prime Minister Yukio Hatoyama's government say they want the base moved out of Japan altogether. U.S. Assistant Secretary of State Kurt Campbell, the State Department's top Asia policy official, said he would like to see a breakthrough before Obama arrives in Japan in early November. «We hope to have real progress over the course of the next several weeks,» Campbell said Monday after meeting with Japanese Parliamentary Secretary of Defense Akihisa Nagashima. Japan has long been a crucial military ally for Washington and hosts about 50,000 U.S. troops, with two-thirds of them on Okinawa. But the new government that took power in Tokyo last month has repeatedly said it wants to redefine the alliance on more even terms, a sentiment Nagashima repeated Monday after the meeting. «We want to build a new relationship» with the U.S., he said. Japan has also said it has no plans to extend its current refueling mission in the Indian Ocean, which supports U.S.-led forces in Afghanistan and is due to end in January. The government has said it may increase its monetary contributions and infrastructure support instead. Obama is to visit Japan on Nov. 12-13, part of his first Asian trip as president that will also include stops in Singapore, China and South Korea. Campbell was due to travel to Beijing later Monday.
