TOKYO - Japanese Prime Minister Yoshihiko Noda on Monday expressed his personal apology to Okinawa over his cabinet's insincere attitude towards the moving of an unpopular US air base.

Noda told governor Hirokazu Nakaima in his first trip to Okinawa as prime minister that he intended to stick with a long- stalled plan to shift the air base, but was personally sorry for the way the issue had been dealt.

"We mustn't fix the Futenma air station" at its current base, Noda told Nakaima, referring to a 2006 agreement for the base to be relocated from its crowded urban location to a sparsely populated coastal zone.

But Noda added: "I apologize to the governor and people of Okinawa" for the insincere attitude the governing Democratic Party of Japan (DPJ) has shown towards the issue.

Many local people of Okinawa want the base off the southern island altogether and say the US military presence there should be cut.

"The security situation surrounding our nation is getting tougher. We have to maintain deterrence capability", Noda said.

Nakaima kept to his line of rejecting the base relocation plan and asked the central government to reconsider the move to the coral waters of Henoko in favour of an off-island solution.

Tokyo and Washington agreed in 2006 to the base move and to cutting the number of troops in Okinawa, which is now host to half of the about 47,000 US service personnel in Japan.