US and Japan agree Okinawa troop redeployment

The US and Japan have announced a revised agreement on cleaning up the US military presence on Okinawa that will shift thousands of US soldiers from the southern Japanese island to Guam and other Asia-Pacific sites.

Thursday's plan, unveiled just days before Yoshihiko Noda, Japan's prime minister, visits President Barack Obama, helps the allies work around the still unresolved dispute over moving the Futenma air base from a crowded part of Okinawa to a new site.

Some 9,000 marines will be sent to ''locations outside of Japan'', a joint statement by Washington and Tokyo said. Some 10,000 troops will remain.

The troops leaving Okinawa will be moved to Guam, Hawaii and other locations in the Asia Pacific region.

Japan has been unable to fulfil the conditions of an agreement over Okinawa signed in 2006 under which it had to find an alternative location for the Futenma air base before US troops were redeployed.

Proposed alternatives met heavy local opposition.

At the beginning of talks this year, both countries said they had agreed to de-link the two issues.

In the latest statement, they said they still agreed that Futenma should be relocated to Camp Schwab, in a sparsely populated area miles north of Naha, in line with the 2006 deal.

This "remains the only viable solution that has been identified to date", the two governments said.

The US presence on Okinawa island has long been controversial.

Locals on Okinawa say having the Futenma base near a city is dangerous and noisy and they want it removed from the island altogether.

Occasional well-publicised instances of bad behaviour and criminality by US personnel, including a 1995 rape of a 12-year-old girl by three US servicemen, have fuelled the concerns.

It remains unclear when the troops will be redeployed and when the Futenma base will be moved.

The US has a total military deployment in Japan of about 50,000 personnel.