AFP - Japan told the United States Thursday to respect its democratic process in a row over a US base and that the issue would not be resolved before President Barack Obama's visit next month.

Foreign Minister Katsuya Okada was speaking a day after US Defense Secretary Robert Gates bluntly pressed Tokyo to "move on" quickly with previously agreed plans to build a new US airbase on southern Okinawa island.

The issue has clouded the US-Japan security alliance since a centre-left government took power in Tokyo five weeks ago, vowing a less subservient relationship with Washington after half a century of conservative rule.

Japan's new government has said it will review an agreement to build the new base by 2014 -- a project opposed by many Okinawans who object to the US troop presence and complain of aircraft noise and the risk of accidents.

"The will of the people of Okinawa and the will of the people of Japan was expressed in the elections," Okada said on television, predicting that the issue won't be resolved before Obama's scheduled November 12-13 visit.

"I don't think we will act simply by accepting what the US tells us, just because the US is saying this, in such a short period of time."

The United States, which defeated Japan in World War II and then occupied the country, now has 47,000 troops stationed there, more than half of them on Okinawa, the site of one of the bloodiest battles of the war.

Their presence has often caused friction with the local community, especially when American servicemen have committed crimes.

A flashpoint has been the US Marine Corps' Futenma Air Base, located in a crowded urban area.

Under a 2006 bilateral agreement, the heliport functions of the base would be moved to a coastal area of Okinawa by 2014, while 8,000 Marines would be moved to Guam in a relocation to be partly financed by Japan.

However, the new government of Prime Minister Yukio Hatoyama and his left-leaning and pacifist coalition partners have advocated reviewing the deal and suggested the base be moved out of Okinawa or even out of Japan.

Gates, on a Tokyo visit Wednesday, publicly stressed "the importance of moving forward expeditiously on the roadmap as agreed".

The Yomiuri daily reported that the Pentagon chief had told Okada that Japan should approve the base move before Obama's visit.

Okada said on Thursday that Gates had "pressed and said Japan and the United States had negotiated this issue for as many as 13 years".

"But I told him that we, as an opposition party, had opposed the plan for those years," the foreign minister told Tokyo Broadcasting System Television.

"In the last general election, those opposing the current relocation plan won all the four constituencies on Okinawa. This shows the people's democratic will at this moment."

He added: "I have to question an attitude of insisting that this has been already decided and that there is no option but to implement it."

Okada said the issue should be resolved by the end of the year.

"This is not the type of issue on which we can spend as much time as we want," he said. "This discussion started in the first place because the current Futenma Air Base is extremely dangerous for local residents.

"We need to hurry to remove the danger."