Kan's planned visit to U.S. likely to be delayed

TOKYO (Kyodo) - A planned visit to the United States by Prime Minister Naoto Kan could be delayed until July or later due to the lack of tangible progress on the issue of relocating the Futenma airfield in Okinawa Prefecture, Japanese government sources said Saturday.
The move by the government to reconsider the timing of Kan's U.S. visit, which had been expected to take place by the end of June, comes at a time when Tokyo and Washington are facing difficulties organizing the next round of security talks involving their foreign and defense ministers.
The ''two-plus-two'' talks are designed to create an agreement on the configuration of a replacement facility for the U.S. Marine Corps' Futenma Air Station and to lay the groundwork for a meeting between Kan and President Barack Obama to be held during Kan's U.S. visit this year.
Earlier this month, lower-level talks involving Japanese and U.S. foreign and defense officials failed to set a date for the ministerial gathering, although the two governments are still trying to hold it in late June, the sources said.
Complicating the relocation issue, three influential U.S. senators proposed Wednesday integrating the airfield into the Kadena air base, also in Okinawa, instead of building a new facility on the coast of Nago as agreed upon by the two countries.
Carl Levin, a Democrat from Michigan and chairman of the Senate Arms Services Committee, and the two other senators called the planned relocation to Nago ''unrealistic and unworkable'' in making their bipartisan proposal.
Kan and Obama agreed that a U.S. visit by the prime minister would occur in the first half of this year when they met last November in Yokohama on the sidelines of a series of meetings of the Asia-Pacific Economic Cooperation forum. The two leaders expect to issue a joint statement aiming to deepen the bilateral alliance.