Party Leaders Urge U.S.-Japan Security Pact Revision : Asia: Rape of Okinawa girl, allegedly by three Americans, unleashes calls by Liberal Democrats for redefinition of agreement.

As political fallout mounts over a rape incident allegedly involving three U.S. servicemen, officials of the leading Liberal Democratic Party say they intend to press the United States for revisions in U.S.-Japan security arrangements.

The party’s Secretary General Koichi Kato said in an interview last week that sentiment is growing even within his own conservative party to seek other revisions in security agreements beyond simply a change in legal procedures now being discussed.

The party--a longtime staunch supporter of U.S.-Japan security arrangements--would like the U.S. forces to “rethink” the amount of airspace and telecommunications frequencies granted them, Kato said, because Japan’s private sector increasingly needs them.

In addition, party leaders expect to ask that U.S. forces end their low-altitude flight training over the Sameura Dam area in Kochi prefecture on the island of Shikoku, said Yoshinori Ono, chairman of the defense committee of the party’s Policy Affairs Research Council.

The growing requests for revisions even among Liberal Democrats underscore the extent to which last month’s rape of a schoolgirl on the southern island of Okinawa has unleashed a wave of political consequences.

U.S. officials had said they would not revise any agreements, and the Japanese initially agreed. But the comments by the Liberal Democrat leaders indicate that the public furor has become too widespread to ignore.

Kato said the incident, along with the end of the Cold War and the demise of the Soviet Union, has emboldened a growing number of politicians to give vent to long-restrained “smoldering feelings” against U.S. military bases in Japan.

Until now, Kato said, sentiment against the U.S. bases had been a “monopoly of the Socialists and Communists.” But this time, even the party’s defense experts support a redefinition of the U.S.-Japan security agreement known as the Status of Forces Agreement.

A U.S. military spokesman said he had not heard of any new requests from the LDP--which is a member of the coalition government--for revisions in agreements on airspace, telecommunications or flight training. But he said it is Tokyo’s responsibility to provide adequate facilities to allow proper training and operations.

Ono called the low-altitude flights in Kochi noisy, dangerous and environmentally unsound. He said the party is moving “in a direction to stop them.”

“Since it’s 50 years after the war, we have to take another look at the Japan-U.S. relationship in various aspects,” Ono said.

Kato said the U.S.-Japan security treaty, which obligates the United States to defend Japan if the islands are attacked, remains vital to his nation and to the stability of Asia. But, he said, after the overall treaty is reaffirmed by both sides as expected during President Clinton’s trip here next month, specific issues such as flight rights and telecommunications should be taken up and debated.

Meanwhile, negotiations are scheduled to resume this week over Japanese requests to review current legal procedures and allow their police officers to take custody of U.S. military suspects before indictment. Under a U.S.-Japan agreement, suspects remain in American hands until formally charged.

After the Okinawa rape, that agreement kicked up an uproar here. It fueled charges that the U.S. military was not giving police investigating the attack full access for questioning, that the suspects were roaming free on base eating hamburgers and that there was no protection against them fleeing the country, as occurred in a rape case two years ago.

But Walter Mondale, the U.S. ambassador to Japan, said the Americans had always given full access to the Japanese. And military officials said the three suspects had been confined in the brig while in U.S. custody.

The suspects--Marine Pfc. Kendrick M. Ledet, 20, and Pfc. Rodrico Harp, 21, both of Georgia, and Navy seaman Marcus D. Gill, 22, of Texas--have been indicted and are now in Japanese custody. If convicted, they face sentences ranging from four years to life imprisonment.

On Friday, a sports tabloid splashed photos of two of the men across its front page. The headline: “U.S. Military Devils.”