Tokyo has struggled for months to find a solution that will satisfy the people of Okinawa island, who have long chafed under a heavy US military presence, and the security demands of its key ally the United States.

On Friday, Prime Minister Yukio Hatoyama's cabinet stepped up efforts to sell their latest proposal, with the defence minister holding talks in Okinawa while the foreign minister met with US ambassador John Roos.

The dispute centres on the government's review of a 2006 agreement to relocate the controversial US Futenma Marine Corps Air Station from a crowded urban area to a quieter coastal part of the southern island.

Hatoyama, who took office half a year ago, has said the Futenma base may instead be moved off the island or even outside Japan, as demanded by his left-leaning coalition partners and to the chagrin of Washington.

Under a new compromise plan floated days before Foreign Minister Katsuya Okada is expected to meet US Defense Secretary Robert Gates in Washington, the Futenma operations would be split across several locations.

As a sweetener for Okinawans, the reluctant hosts of the majority of the US bases in Japan, some military drill operations could be temporarily moved to another island, under the government's reported plans.

Hatoyama, who has been criticised for indecisiveness over the row, said that "the government is strongly determined to gain the understanding of the people of Okinawa, the people of Japan, and the United States."

He pledged again to stick to a self-imposed deadline to resolve the dispute, promising: "I will solve this issue for sure by the end of May."

The administration of US President Barack Obama has repeatedly urged the government in Tokyo, which last year ended half a century of conservative rule with its landslide election victory, to stick to the original relocation plan.

The United States has used Japan as a major Asia-Pacific military base since the end of World War II and now has 47,000 troops stationed there, more than half on Okinawa, the site of some of the war's bloodiest battles.

Under Japan's new proposal, some Futenma operations would be moved to US Camp Schwab, near the relocation site named in the 2006 pact, which also stipulated that 8,000 Marines would move to the US territory of Guam.

Another option reportedly proposed by Japan is to move operations to reclaimed land off the US Navy's White Beach facility in Uruma, Okinawa.

Japan would also ask US forces to temporarily shift their training drills to the southern main island of Kyushu -- including Tokunoshima island in Kagoshima prefecture and Japanese bases in Nagasaki and Miyazaki prefectures.

"We will propose that the airbase operations be divided and removed step by step," Defence Minister Toshimi Kitazawa told Okinawa Governor Hirokazu Nakaima, who responded that "Okinawa strongly opposes" any new US bases.

Kitazawa also told the governor that the likelihood of Japan implementing the original plan was now "close to zero".

US ambassador Roos said in a statement after he met Okada that the American side will "carefully consider" the ideas laid out by Japan.

It remained far from clear whether the new plan will satisfy either side.

Hatoyama's junior coalition partners, the Social Democrats, whose support Hatoyama's Democratic Party of Japan needs in parliament's upper house, have pushed for Futenma to be entirely relocated to Guam.

In Washington, Admiral Robert Willard, head of the US Pacific Command, Thursday told Congress Guam would be ill-equipped to handle more troops and voiced hope Japan would in the end stick with the original relocation plan.

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