The government on Monday suspended work on the planned relocation of the Futenma military base within Okinawa Prefecture for a month as part of efforts to defuse tensions with local authorities.
Preparations for landfill work at Henoko on the coast of Nago will be suspended through Sept. 9. The central and Okinawa Prefectural governments will use this period to hold "intensive consultations" in an attempt to break the impasse over the relocation of U.S. Marine Corps' Air Station Futenma from a densely populated district in the city of Ginowan.
National and Okinawan officials plan to hold five rounds of talks, with the first on Tuesday in Naha involving Chief Cabinet Secretary Yoshihide Suga and Okinawa Gov. Takeshi Onaga.