REPUBLIKA.CO.ID, TOKYO - The governor of Japan's Okinawa on Friday approved a controversial plan to relocate a US air base to a less populous part of the southern island, but said he would keep pressing to move the base off the island altogether.

The nod from Okinawa, long a reluctant host to the bulk of US military forces in Japan, is an achievement for Prime Minister Shinzo Abe, who has promised a more robust military and tighter security ties with the United States amid escalating tension with China.

The approval came a day after Abe visited Tokyo's Yasukuni Shrine, seen in parts of Asia as a symbol of Japan's past militarism, infuriating China and South Korea, and prompting concern from the United States about deteriorating ties between the Asian neighbors.

Okinawa Governor Hirokazu Nakaima told a news conference he had approved a central government request for a landfill project at the new site, on the Henoko coast near the town of Nago. His approval for that project, required by law and a first step to building the replacement facility, was the last procedural barrier to eventually replacing the US Marines Futenma air base in the crowded town of Ginowan.

"The government has recently met our requests in compiling a plan to reinvigorate Okinawa. We felt that the Abe government's regard for Okinawa is higher than any previous governments'," Nakaima told a news conference.

Sceptics, however, said it remained far from clear whether the relocation - stalled since the move was first agreed upon by Washington and Tokyo in 1996 - would actually take place given persistent opposition from Okinawa residents, many of whom associate the US bases with crime, pollution and noise.

The United States and Japan agreed in 1996 to close the Futenma base but plans for a replacement stalled in the face of opposition in Okinawa, which hosts more than half of the US forces in Japan. Okinawa was occupied by the United States after Japan's defeat in World War Two until 1972.

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