TOKYO: Japan's prime minister said yesterday he wants to decide his stance by year-end on a feud over a US airbase on Okinawa island that threatens to fray the alliance.

Washington wants Tokyo to implement a 2006 agreement to relocate the Marines' Futenma airbase to another site on Okinawa as a prerequisite for shifting up to 8,000 Marines to the US territory of Guam, part of a broader realignment of US forces.

But Prime Minister Yukio Hatoyama said ahead of the August election that swept his Democratic Party to power he favored moving the base off Okinawa, and his two tiny coalition partners insist he should make good on those remarks.