LEAD: U.S. asks Japan to pay 75% of $10 bil. to move Marines to Guam
(Kyodo) _ (EDS: ADDING INFO)

The United States has come up with a $10 billion cost estimate for relocating U.S. Marines from Okinawa to Guam, and has asked Japan to pay $7.5 billion, or 75 percent, through outright grants and loans, a U.S. Defense Department official said Tuesday.

Speaking to some Japanese reporters, the official said the United States has offered to move 8,000 Marines in Okinawa to Guam instead of an earlier agreed plan to move 6,000 to Guam and 1,000 elsewhere in Japan.

But the official said the U.S. side is prioritizing a new plan to relocate the Marine Futemma Air Station within Okinawa, expressing hope that the Japanese government will work out the strong local opposition and pave the way for its implementation before the two nations proceed with cost and other substantive talks on the Guam relocation.

Against this background, the official cautioned that the estimate is just a "preliminary" figure, indicating that it will be lowered before the two nations nail down the total cost.

The official said he is optimistic about the two nations working out an implementation plan as agreed by the end of the month for a broad accord that the two nations reached in October on the realignment of the U.S. military presence in Japan, which includes the Guam and Futemma base relocation plans.

But he expressed U.S. reluctance about holding the so-called two-plus-two top security meeting of ministers in charge of defense and foreign affairs to endorse and release the plan, especially amid lingering local opposition and some unsolved issues.

Japanese government sources said earlier that Tokyo plans to send Foreign Minister Taro Aso and Defense Agency Director General Fukushiro Nukaga to Washington on April 1-2 for the meeting with U.S. Secretary of State Condoleezza Rice and Defense Secretary Donald Rumsfeld

Ellie