"It doesn't mean that we have exhausted all possibilities" of stopping the deployment of a nuclear-powered ship at Yokosuka, Kanagawa governor Shigefumi Matsuzawa said in a statement.

The US Navy announced Friday in Washington that the USS George Washington would replace the USS Kitty Hawk in 2008 as its first nuclear-powered aircraft carrier based in Japan.

Japan, a close US ally, announced in October it had agreed to host a Nimitz-class nuclear-powered aircraft carrier at the port from 2008 prompting protests in the only nation to have suffered nuclear attack.

More than 210,000 people died when Hiroshima and Nagasaki were bombed by US forces in 1945.

"I'll continue urging the Japanese and US governments to solve the noise problem caused by carrier-based aircraft as soon as possible and to try my best to see that a conventional carrier is deployed here," Matsuzawa said.

Japanese Foreign Minister Taro Aso, currently visiting Washington, is scheduled to meet US Secretary of Defense Donald Rumsfeld on Saturday and to discuss the realignment of US forces in Japan.

All rights reserved. © 2005 Agence France-Presse. Sections of the information displayed on this page (dispatches, photographs, logos) are protected by intellectual property rights owned by Agence France-Presse. As a consequence, you may not copy, reproduce, modify, transmit, publish, display or in any way commercially exploit any of the content of this section without the prior written consent of Agence France-Presse.