The United States is confident that it will be able to use American bases in Japan to respond to threats from North Korea despite growing Japanese affinity with China, a senior U.S. official said Tuesday.
"We are absolutely confident we would be able to use Japanese bases in response to a North Korean threat," Wallace Gregson, assistant secretary of defense for Asian and Pacific security affairs, told a House Armed Services
Committee Hearing. "I have no doubt that they are fully aware of the threat from North Korea and fully supportive of all the provisions of our treaty, to support operations should they be necessary in Korea."
Gregson was asked by a lawmaker if Washington is confident that the Japanese government "would allow us to use our bases to undertake an action
that the Chinese disapproved of."
The new liberal government of the Democratic Party of Japan, inaugurated late last year, was embroiled in diplomatic row with Washington over the relocation of a U.S. Marine base in Futenma, Okinawa.
The government of Yukio Hatoyama, elected on pledges to seek closer ties with China, North Korea and other Asian countries and relocation of the U.S. base in Futenma out of Okinawa, agreed in May to retain the base on the southern Japanese island. The concession came amid heightening tensions on the Korean Peninsula after North Korea's sinking of the South Korean warship Cheonan in March with the loss of 46 lives.
Hatoyama resigned over the Futenma issue, and the new government of Prime Minister Naoto Kan has yet to provide concrete plans for the relocation of the base to a less crowded part of Okinawa due to rising opposition from Okinawans.
Japanese officials say they might not be able to meet the Aug. 31 deadline for the provision of the relocation plans due to the November election for the governor of Okinawa Prefecture.
Gregson dismissed concerns over a possible chasm in the alliance with Japan, citing North Korean threats.
"The recent Cheonan incident did nothing to diminish Japanese concern about the North Korean threat," he said. "Looking back over time, the
Japanese have suffered at the hands of North Korea with having their citizens kidnapped and with incursions into their territory."
Kurt Campbell, assistant secretary of state for East Asian and Pacific Affairs, joined forces with Gregson in defending the strong alliance with
Japan over North Korea policy.
"We have enjoyed unprecedented cooperation with Japan on a number of consequential regional issues," Campbell said. "Japan's steadfast support
for the Republic of Korea was vital in rallying the international community to offer a united response to the Cheonan sinking."
Japan is also "a key partner in our efforts to seek the verifiable denuclearization of the Korean Peninsula in a peaceful manner and in holding North Korea to its commitments under the 2005 Joint Statement of the Six Party Talks," he said.
Gregson said that North Korea's nuclear ambitions and other provocations have helped consolidate cooperation with the two major Asian allies, South Korea and Japan.
"There are historic problems between Korea and Japan, but ... that trilateral cooperation in the security arena really accelerated after last
year's North Korean nuclear episode, and has continued to accelerate, and has been given even more impetus by the sinking of the Cheonan, which served as a reminder to all of us that this is a very dangerous neighborhood that we all live in," the official said.
The Japanese military is taking part in joint South Korea-U.S. naval exercises being in the East Sea with the participation of the nuclear-powered aircraft carrier George Washington as a show of force against future provocations from the North.
The United States wants to organize trilateral military exercises with South Korea and Japan to better deal with regional threats, but South Korea
has been reluctant to cooperate militarily due to lingering resentment over Japan's past colonial rule.
The territorial dispute over South Korea's Dokdo islets, also claimed by Japan, is another potential source of conflict. Navy patrol boats from South Korea and Japan nearly clashed in waters off Dokdo in 2006, when Japan tried to conduct a survey of waterways near the islets.
Washington needs close cooperation between Japan and South Korea to deal with North Korea's nuclear weapons ambitions, the growing power of China and other regional security issues.
China, North Korea's staunchest communist ally, greatly diluted the U.N. Security Council statement on the Cheonan incident, and is said to be a loophole in the U.N. sanctions imposed after North Korea's nuclear and missile tests early last year.
U.S. Secretary of State Hillary Clinton met with Chinese Foreign Minister Yang Jiechi in Hanoi Friday on the sidelines of the ASEAN Regional Forum.
"North Korea was a part of that discussion," State Department spokesman Philip Crowley said. "And we continue to encourage China in its
conversations with North Korea, to encourage North Korea to be more constructive and to cease the kind of provocative actions that have created
the tensions in the region."