U.S. President Bill Clinton expressed hope June 25 that all pending issues concerning U.S. military bases in Okinawa, including the issue of the Marine Corps Futenma Air Station, will be resolved before he attends a Group of Eight summit there in July 2000. "I don't want to go over there and have all these things hanging out," Clinton told a White House news conference. The Japanese government and Okinawa Prefecture are now under pressure to expedite settlement of the issues, including the planned relocation of the Futenma facility.
In 1996, the Japan-U.S. Special Action Committee on Okinawa agreed that the Futenma facility and other U.S. military bases should be returned to Japanese control, but the Futenma issue remains unresolved. If it is not resolved, the Japan-U.S. security alliance could be endangered. Prime Minister Keizo Obuchi told the Diet that he did not think Clinton was setting a deadline for solving the base issues in his remarks last month. Instead, Obuchi said, Clinton was merely expressing hope for an early settlement of the issues.
Clinton and Obuchi agreed, however, during talks June 18 in Cologne, Germany — where they attended a G8 summit — to promote bilateral consultations on ways of breaking the deadlock on the Futenma issue. On June 9, U.S. Ambassador Thomas Foley told Okinawa Gov. Keiichi Inamine that there should be no further delay in implementing the SACO accord. These developments show that Japan and the United States seek to use the Okinawa summit as leverage for solving the base issues.