The areas -- Camp Zukeran, a resupply depot in Urasoe, and a port facility in Naha -- are all near residential or urban districts, and local residents have long called for their handover, the Nihon Keizai Shimbun said.

Officials from both governments are negotiating plans to transfer activities from these areas to US facilities in the central and northern parts of the island, the business daily said.

Their handover aims to mitigate Okinawa's burden in hosting American bases. Okinawa, which accounts for less than one percent of Japan's land mass, remains the base for 65 percent of the 40,500 US troops in the country.

Japan hopes to incorporate the details into an interim report to be compiled as early as this month, but the US contingent has maintained that a resolution about another controversial site, the Futenma Air Base, is a condition for finalizing the burden reduction plan, Nihon Keizai said.

The United States has already agreed to move the Futenma Air Base out of the crowded urban center of Ginowan, where residents complain about aircraft noise.

But the alternative location for the base, off the shore of the quiet Okinawan fishing town of Heneko, has also faced protests, in part because environmentalists say the area is a habitat for an endangered sea cow.

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