Japan, U.S. to avoid bases feud for Obama visitオバマ訪日で沖縄は話題とならない。オバマ政権は、「普天間移設問題を年末までに決着するように」と鳩山に伝えてあるからだ。つまり、鳩山の名護市市長選（一月）の結果で決めるとする移設転覆計画に釘を刺したわけである。以下、ロイターの記事。伊勢平次郎 ルイジアナ
By Isabel Reynolds
Reuters
Friday, November 6, 2009; 2:38 AM
GINOWAN, Japan (Reuters) - The United States and Japan look set to avoid a collision over where to relocate a Marine base when President Barack Obama visits Tokyo next week, but the row could still fray security ties in the months ahead.
A dispute over a replacement facility for Futenma air base on Japan's southern island of Okinawa, a key part of a realignment of U.S. troops in Japan, has strained the alliance, seen as the core of regional security arrangements.
The row coincides with deepening questions about how China's rising military and economic clout will reshape security ties.
Japanese Prime Minister Yukio Hatoyama, who took office in September pledging to forge more equal ties with Washington, had said before his party's election victory that he wanted to move the base off Okinawa to ease the burden on residents there.
But U.S. officials say they want to push ahead with a 2006 deal to move it from the crowded city of Ginowan in central Okinawa to a remoter site by 2014 as a prerequisite to moving 8,000 Marines off the island to the U.S. territory of Guam.
Washington has notified Japan it will not press for a decision by Obama's November 12-13 visit, but wants a resolution to the dispute by the end of the year, the Nikkei newspaper said.
But Hatoyama repeated on Friday that he had no plan to decide by the time of Obama's trip -- or to say when he would make up his mind.
"U.S.-Japan relations are not just about the Futenma issue," Hatoyama told a parliamentary panel.
"There are many issues that President Obama is concerned about and issues that Japan is concerned about, so we would like to discuss each theme," he said. "I am convinced it will be a meaningful trip."
PM'S DILEMMA
Japanese Foreign Minister Katsuya Okada has also floated the end of the year as a de facto deadline, but Hatoyama has suggested he might wait until after an Okinawa mayoral election in January to get a reading on local public opinion.
Hatoyama faces a dilemma as he tries to live up to his campaign comments without disrupting ties with Tokyo's closest security ally as both countries try to adapt to China's growing clout.
Many residents of Okinawa, a subtropical island about 1,600 km (1,000 miles) south of Tokyo that hosts about half the 47,000 U.S. military personnel in Japan, have long resented what they see as an unfair burden for maintaining the security alliance.
A mass anti-base rally has been called for Sunday, just days before Obama arrives in the Japanese capital.
"I want to get rid of it," said Toshio Arakaki, 52, whose three children go to a primary school a stone's throw from the base. "If they are going to replace it, they should find somewhere not just outside Okinawa, but outside Japan. Okinawa has had enough."
Other Okinawa residents, though, worry about the economic impact of closing the bases, since the island is otherwise mainly reliant on an influx of tourists attracted by white sandy beaches, clear seas and a unique culture that owes much to China.
If Hatoyama decides before January to implement the original deal, perhaps with minor changes, that would almost certainly upset a small but vocal coalition partner ahead of an election for parliament's upper house in mid-2010.
Further delay would make deciding harder and risk angering Washington, although few analysts expect strains over security ties to affect trade and investment between the world's two biggest economies.
"In Japan, it is always legitimate to say, 'Let's start the negotiations from scratch', but the Americans are not going to put up with that," said Steven Reed, a professor at Chuo University.
Okada has proposed considering an alternative plan to merge the Marine base with another U.S. base on Okinawa, but Washington has rejected the idea. Both Hatoyama and Japan's defense minister have expressed disagreement with it.
ほとんどの将軍たちは、マクリスタルの兵員増派４４００人を支持している。ところが、オバマの国防アドバイザーたちの意見が割れている。制服組ＶＳシビリアンのはざ間でオバマは迷っているのだ。オバマは、中間策に傾いている。要請されたアフガニスタン増派を少なくしたいと考えている。まだ、会議が続いている。１１月１１日からアジア訪問が始まる。この記事では、増派を最終決定するのは、２０日以降だろうと。当然、共和党からは、「優柔不断」と批判されている。筆者も同感である。戦争は兵士一人が欠けても勝てないものだからである。伊勢平次郎 ルイジアナ
Obama seeking options on forces
MEETING WITH JOINT CHIEFS
President looks to send fewer additional troops Washington Post Staff Writer
Saturday, October 31, 2009
President Obama has asked the Pentagon's top generals to provide him with more options for troop levels in Afghanistan, two U.S. officials said late Friday, with one adding that some of the alternatives would allow Obama to send fewer new troops than the roughly 40,000 requested by his top commander.
Obama met with the Joint Chiefs of Staff at the White House on Friday, holding a 90-minute discussion that centered on the strain on the force after eight years of war in two countries. The meeting -- the first of its kind with the chiefs of the Navy, Army, Marine Corps and Air Force, who were not part of the president's war council meetings on Afghanistan in recent weeks -- prompted Obama to request another such meeting before he announces a decision on sending additional troops, the officials said.
The military chiefs have been largely supportive of a resource request by Gen. Stanley A. McChrystal, the top U.S. and NATO commander in Afghanistan, that would by one Pentagon estimate require the deployment of 44,000 additional troops. But opinion among members of Obama's national security team is divided, and he now appears to be seeking a compromise solution that would satisfy both his military and civilian advisers.
Obama is expected to receive several options from the Pentagon about troop levels next week, according to the two officials, who discussed the deliberations on the condition of anonymity because they are not authorized to speak publicly.
Before he can determine troop levels, his advisers have said, he must decide whether to embrace a strategy focused heavily on counterinsurgency, which would require additional forces to protect population centers, or one that makes counterterrorism the main focus of U.S. efforts in the country, which would rely on relatively fewer American troops.
One option under review involves a blend of the two approaches, featuring an emphasis on counterterrorism in the north and some parts of western Afghanistan as well as an expanded counterinsurgency effort in the south and east, one of the officials said. Obama has also asked for a province-by-province review of the country to determine which areas can by managed effectively by local leaders.
The president appears committed to adding at least 10,000 to 15,000 troops in Afghanistan in an effort to bolster the training of Afghan army and police officers in the country. Current plans call for the United States to double the size of the Afghan army and police forces to about 400,000 in the hope that they can take over security responsibilities.
In meeting with the military chiefs, Obama heard their assessment of the how prepared the services are to handle a new commitment. "Each chief discussed the state of their own service, how they are doing today and what the long-term consequences will be for each of their services," an administration official said. The military advisers also put the troop deployments in the context of the rest of their global deployments, including in Iraq.
It was not a "recommendations meeting," with concrete options of how to proceed, the official said. That will presumably come in the next such meeting, which has not been scheduled.
The timing of Obama's decision on Afghanistan remains up in the air. But his request for another meeting with the military chiefs -- and the expectation that he will meet again with his top national security advisers before reaching a conclusion -- may leave him too little time to decide the issue before he travels to Asia on Nov. 11. Secretary of State Hillary Rodham Clinton plans to be overseas for much of that time, except for a brief stint at home from Wednesday to Friday. , giving Obama little opportunity to convene his war council in person. It appears increasingly likely that Obama will not announce his new Afghanistan strategy until after returning to the United States on Nov. 20.
Obama has come under criticism from Republicans, notably former vice president Richard B. Cheney, for deliberating so long, but his advisers have said he is determined to get the decision right rather than satisfy his critics.
In contrast to Iraq, where there was significant dissension on whether to deploy an additional 30,000 troops in 2007, the top brass has been mostly united in the support of McChrystal's call for more troops in Afghanistan.
Both Adm. Mike Mullen, the chairman of the Joint Chiefs of Staff, and Gen. David H. Petraeus, the top commander in the Middle East, have told the administration that they agree with McChrystal's dire assessment of the security situation and his call for more forces to wrest the initiative back from the Taliban.
The service chiefs have not publicly voiced either support or opposition. Gen. James T. Conway, the Marine Corps chief, had campaigned hard this year for the Marines to play a much larger role in the country. In internal meetings, Army chief Gen. George W. Casey Jr. has raised concerns about "dwell time" -- the periods that troops have at home between deployments.
The Army is particularly concerned that soldiers who spend less than 18 months at home between combat tours do not have enough time to train for high-intensity tank warfare.
A U.S.-Iraq security pact requires the United States to withdraw its forces from Iraq by the end of 2011, which would reduce some of the strain on the American military. But bombings this week in Baghdad, which killed more than 155 Iraqis, raise questions about whether Iraq is stable enough to allow for an accelerated drawdown in advance of that deadline, as some military officials had hoped.
Japan intercepts ballistic missile in Hawaii test
防衛省は28日、海上自衛隊のイージス艦「みょうこう」(7250トン)が同日、米ハワイ沖で弾道ミサイルを撃ち落とす海上配備型迎撃ミサイル(SM3)の発射試験を行い、標的の迎撃に成功したと発表した。
Wed Oct 28, 12:59 am ET
HONOLULU – A Japanese navy ship has intercepted a medium-range ballistic missile in a test off Hawaii.
The U.S. military fired the test's target on Tuesday from the Pacific Missile Range Facility on Kauai.
The JS Myoko detected the target, tracked it and then fired an SM-3 interceptor missile from its deck. The interceptor hit the target in space above the Pacific Ocean.
The Myoko is the third of four Japanese ships to be upgraded with ballistic missile defense technology.
The second, the JS Chokai, participated in a test off Hawaii last November but an unidentified problem prevented its interceptor from shooting down the target. An investigation is ongoing.
The first Japanese attempt, from the JS Kongo in 2007, was successful.
Afghanistan’s First Railroad Aims to Undercut Taliban
アフガニスタンに鉄道？昔からあった常識的なアイデアだ。だが、タリバンは破壊者だから、列車撃は
永遠に続く。このアフガニスタンを近代化するためには、タリバンらのテロリストを武装解除しなければ不可能である。アメリカでは厭戦気分が充満してきた。"戦争する価値がない"とブログでは１００％だ。オバマはどうするのだろうか？僕自身は兵員増派に賛成だが、、伊勢平次郎 ルイジアナ
By Dave McCombs
Oct. 28 (Bloomberg) -- Afghanistan is building its first rail link with the help of the Asian Development Bank in a bid to improve trade and aid and undermine highway bandits helping to fund insurgents, including the Taliban.
The bank will name the design and operation contractors next week for the $170 million railway from Uzbekistan’s border to Mazar-e-Sharif, Afghanistan’s second-largest city and a hub for aid and imports, said Juan Miranda, ADB director-general for Central and West Asia. Work on the 75-kilometer (47-mile) line will start this year and may finish in 2010, he said.
Afghanistan has only 25 kilometers of train track and crime gangs along the highways extort cash and steal cargo from haulers. Human rights campaigners and U.S. government officials say the bandits are helping fuel an insurgency that prompted President Barack Obama to send 21,000 additional soldiers to the country this year and to consider committing more U.S. troops.
“It’s a project that will be transformational,” Miranda said by phone from the Philippines capital, Manila. “A railway is a visible sign of progress and it will really help with the trade bottleneck at the border. It’s a sign of hope, rather than desperation.”
U.S. General Stanley McChrystal, the commander of U.S. and NATO-led forces in Afghanistan, wrote in an August assessment requesting more troops that insurgent taxes imposed on the “local population through check points” would enable anti- government forces to fund operations, even if profit from the opium trade was eliminated.
Failed Attempts
For more than a century, every attempt to build a rail network has failed as French, German, Indian, Iranian and Soviet rail plans were abandoned or never broke ground, leaving the landlocked nation without an all-weather transport backbone.
“A rail line would help by cutting off the source of funds for some of the organized crime groups, because they would not be able to stop the train,” said Ahmad Nader Naderi, a member of the Kabul-based Afghan Independent Human Rights Commission.
Afghanistan’s reliance on trucks facilitates “informal payments” such as extortion that inflate shipping costs by 50 percent in the region, according to a 2006 World Bank study. The International Monetary Fund in 2007 estimated shipping costs and delays in Afghanistan are double the regional average.
“Projects like this railway would bring hope for a better future,” said Nader Naderi, whose commission investigates human rights abuses.
King Khan’s Railway
Attempts to create an Afghan railroad began in the 1920s when two German locomotives were used on a 7-kilometer line from Kabul. When King Amanullah Khan, who ordered them, was overthrown, the project was abandoned. The engines now sit rusting among weeds in an outdoor museum, said Andrew Grantham, news editor of Railway Gazette International magazine and author of a Web site on the history of rail projects in Afghanistan.
Three locomotives imported from Germany in the 1950s to supply a power station east of Kabul vanished, their fate unknown, said Grantham, who also said he thinks the ADB-financed railway will be built.
The current rail plan may not succeed, said Malou Innocent, a foreign policy analyst at the Cato Institute, a Washington research organization. While aid projects pay a percentage to the Taliban for protection, that may not prevent attacks, she said in an e-mailed comment.
Security Threat
“Unless enough U.S., NATO, and Afghan troops are prepared to defend the new railway network indefinitely, we could see all of this infrastructure destroyed almost as quickly as we build it,” said Innocent, co-author of the report: “Escaping the Graveyard of Empires: A Strategy to Exit Afghanistan.”
In February, 1,500 metric tons of Russian-donated flour packed onto 25 rail cars arrived at Haryaton, where the Uzbekistan railway line ends, Russia’s state-run RIA Novosti news agency reported. The cargo took days to shift onto trucks and weeks to deliver, allowing more spoilage, theft and extortion.
Almost half of Afghanistan’s imports and even more of its humanitarian aid now come through Haryaton to Mazar-e-Sharif, 290 kilometers north of the capital, Kabul.
Local governors have been accused of extorting payments from truck drivers, undermining support for President Hamid Karzai’s central government, Nader Naderi said.
Deteriorating road security is also thwarting the U.S. military. In June 2008 alone, 44 trucks and 220,000 gallons (832,790 liters) of fuel were lost because of hijackings and attacks while delivering fuel to Bagram air field near Kabul, the U.S. Government Accountability Office said in a March 2009 report.
ADB Investment
While the ADB is financing 97 percent of estimated costs through a $165 million grant, Afghanistan will contribute $5 million. The rail construction contract has been awarded to Uzbekistan Temir Yollari, the Uzbek national railway company.
The ADB expects to invest about a billion dollars in Afghanistan over the next five years, Miranda said.
The paving of a 3,000-kilometer ring road through Kabul, Herat and Kandahar, started six years ago, has yet to be completed as the December 2009 target approaches. Taliban attacks on workers and traffic have delayed construction, Richard Boucher, assistant U.S. secretary of state, said last November.
October became the deadliest month for the U.S. since its 2001 invasion, with 55 fatalities, more than the annual death tolls for the years from 2001 to 2004. Eight U.S. service members and an Afghan civilian working were killed yesterday by improvised landmines, which are often placed along roads.
Tokyo Defense Kabuki
There's a widening gap in the U.S.-Japan security alliance.Article Comments (1) more in When the U.S. and Japan announced a sweeping military alliance realignment plan in 2006, both governments characterized their relationship as "the indispensable foundation of Japan's security and of peace and stability in the Asia-Pacific region." Yesterday, Prime Minister Yukio Hatoyama paid lip service to the alliance and then told parliament he wants to "frankly discuss" the implementation of a crucial part of that pact, the relocation of a U.S. air base on Okinawa.
This isn't a minor tiff. Mr. Hatoyama's grandstanding endangers the entire 2006 agreement, a complex document that took more than a decade to hash out. The U.S. agreed to close the Futenma base and move it to a coastal area of the island. Washington also agreed to move some 8,000 Marines and their families to Guam by 2014, plus consolidate other facilities and forces in Japan and return land to locals. Without the Futenma link, the other moves are thrown, well, off base.
Military leaders seem to understand how these pieces fit together. Japanese Defense Minister Toshimi Kitazawa said Wednesday that the Futenma move is "extremely important." The same day, U.S. Defense Secretary Robert Gates called it the "linchpin" of the 2006 pact. U.S. Joint Chiefs of Staff chairman Michael Mullen told reporters in Tokyo Friday that stalling the realignment "diminishes the security support for Japan in the region."
There are signs of dissent within Mr. Hatoyama's cabinet, too. Foreign Minister Katsuya Okada said Friday that moving Futenma off the island entirely, as some pols are suggesting, is "not an option." Locals in Okinawa aren't united in opposition to the base, either, as many enjoy the economic benefits it provides.
Mr. Hatoyama may feel that he's simply sticking to a campaign pledge to put more distance between Japan and the U.S. But it doesn't sound like he's thought much about the alternatives. Will Japan spend more on its own defense? Does Mr. Hatoyama think the North Korean nuclear program and growing Chinese military force aren't serious enough to warrant a closer U.S.-Japan relationship? Does he think diplomacy alone can keep Japan safe? These are the questions Japan's new prime minister needs to be asking, rather than putting on a kabuki show on defense.
