US President Barack Obama and Yukio Hatoyama, Japanese prime minister, on Friday pledged to deepen and develop their nations’ half-century-old alliance, waving aside worries that Tokyo’s historic change of government would push the Pacific powers apart.
But at a closely watched summit on the first day of Mr Obama’s first Asian tour as president, the leaders could not conceal continuing differences on the most pressing problem for the alliance: the plan to move a US Marine base on the island of Okinawa.
