WASHINGTON -- On Dec. 27, Japanese central government officials and leaders from Okinawa Prefecture announced agreement on a basic plan for the proposed construction of a joint civil-military use airport on the reef off eastern Nago City. The announcement by the Futenma Relocation Committee ("Daitai Shisetsu Kyogikai") came at the panel's eighth meeting -- almost six years after the Interim Report of the Special Action Committee on Okinawa, or SACO, was released and two years after Nago Mayor Tateo Kishimoto conditionally accepted the relocation of Futenma's U.S. military base to his community.

The committee's decision was not unexpected. Central government and local officials had been quietly paving the way for an agreement by yearend to plan for budget appropriations in the upcoming Diet session and to prevent the issue from becoming any more contentious than needed before the Feb. 3 Nago mayoral election.

Yet symbolic of the conflicting concerns (and in some cases competing commercial interests) among ward, city, prefectural and national authorities, a decision was not reached on the scale of the proposed facility or its actual construction method. Moreover, reflecting even more difficult political differences between the central government and Okinawa Gov. Keiichi Inamine (as well as Kishimoto), an understanding on the problematic "15-year" time limit and other conditions set by the prefecture and Nago City was put off for future consideration.