Hillary to meet Japan FM, likely on US base
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U.S. Secretary of State Hillary Clinton will meet her Japanese counterpart Katsuya Okada on Tuesday in Hawaii, and the two are likely to talk about the row surrounding the relocation of U.S. Marine's Futenma base in Okinawa, the State Department said Thursday.
Department spokesman P.J. Crowley said Clinton will meet Okada ahead of her visits to Papua New Guinea, New Zealand and Australia, and he "wouldn't be surprised if the issue of Futenma comes up."
The two are also likely to discuss security issues such as the war in Afghanistan.
According to a Status of Forces Agreement (SOFA) signed by Japan's then governing Liberal Democratic Party (LDP) and U.S. administration of President George W. Bush in 2006, 8,000 U.S. troops will be relocated from Okinawa Prefecture to Guam, and a base in the urban center of Futenma will be moved to a more rural area, part of a broader realignment of U.S. troops in Japan.
Since coming to power last year, the Democratic Party of Japan (DPJ) has pushed to see negotiations restarted on the SOFA agreement, creating tension between the two allies.
Japanese Prime Minister Yukio Hatoyama has said he would like to see the United States and Japan have a more equal relationship, and views reassessing the SOFA agreement as one means of achieving this. He has pledged to decide by May how to proceed on the base issue.
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