Government victorious in dogfight over air base

Japan's central government muscled the governor of Okinawa out of the way on Monday in a row over the construction of a US air base, suspending his stop-work order in the latest fraught chapter of a two-decade row.

The move allows the central government to press on with a much-delayed project that will see the closure of the Futenma Air Base in a crowded urban area, and its replacement on a rural coastline at Nago.

The project, mooted in 1996, has been bogged down by local opposition from islanders who say they bear a disproportionate burden by hosting more than half of the 47,000 US service personnel stationed in Japan.