Prime Minister Yukio Hatoyama's administration will focus on a plan to transfer an Okinawa U.S. Marine base's helicopter operations to Tokunoshima Island in Kagoshima Prefecture, government sources said April 9.

"I want to use all my strength to realize the Tokunoshima (plan)," Hatoyama was quoted as saying by the sources during a Cabinet meeting April 2.

On April 9, U.S. Ambassador to Japan John Roos met with Foreign Minister Katsuya Okada and told him the United States is not ready to launch working-level talks over the idea of relocating Futenma units until Tokyo presents definite construction plans and wins the consent of residents in the affected site first, the sources said.

Washington is reportedly reluctant to move Futenma aircraft units to Tokunoshima, which is 200 km away from Okinawa Island, because the Marines must work in close proximity to their aircraft.

Thousands of islanders staged a rally last month against moving Futenma units to Tokunoshima. A larger demonstration is reportedly planned for the near future.

Previously, the government met with opposition from the United States on a proposal to build a man-made island off the Katsuren Peninsula in eastern Okinawa Island adjacent to the U.S. Navy's White Beach facility to serve as the relocation site for U.S. Marine Corps Air Station Futenma, which is in the nearby city of Ginowan, the sources said.

In the April 2 meeting, Cabinet ministers agreed to move the Futenma helicopter operations to Tokunoshima and build a heliport at U.S. Marine Corps Camp Schwab in Nago, also on Okinawa Island, and eventually to the yet-to-be-filled-in shallows off the Katsuren Peninsula near Uruma, according to the sources.

But Hatoyama, who leads the ruling Democratic Party of Japan, apparently put priority on Tokunoshima instead of the artificial island, telling the meeting he wants them to concentrate their efforts on negotiating with the United States and the people on the island with this goal in mind, the sources said.