Foreign Minister Nobutaka Machimura said Saturday the government will accelerate work on relocating some of the functions of U.S. Marine Corps Futenma Air Station in Okinawa Prefecture in line with a Japan-U.S. agreement.
Machimura indicated at a news conference in Naha that a faster relocation of the Futenma functions can be achieved by speeding up the construction of a relocation site on coral reefs off the city of Nago in Okinawa, after the ongoing environmental assessment is completed.
"It seems hard to shorten the time for the environmental assessment," he said during a news conference at the end of a trip to Okinawa that started Friday evening.