Washington, Oct. 15 (IPS/Danielle Knight) -- Women's organisations from Japan and South Korea, unsuccessful in influencing their own governments on environmental matters, are in Washington to demand the U.S. government cleans up its military bases overseas.

"While local drinking water is contaminated by PCBs from these bases, and cancer rates in certain areas have increased, the U.S. military is not held accountable for any environmental damages,"
says Toguchi Sumiko, a counsellor with Japan's Environmental Agency. "The Japanese government has yet to provide any resolutions to this serious problem."

The environmentalists say when they ask the Japanese and South Korean governments why the United States is not cleaning up environmental pollution on the bases that is reportedly affecting
nearby communities, officials reply they are bound by the Status of Forces Agreement. This treaty between Washington and host countries states that the United States is not obliged, when it returns
facilities and areas back to the host country, to restore the areas to their original condition.

"With certain agreements...the U.S. military has no legal authority nor legal liability with regard to environmental clean-up," Gary Vest, a spokesman for environmental affairs at the Defense
Department, told IPS.

Despite the agreement, the United States has a "moral obligation" to clean-up environmental contamination that has endangered the health of local residents, say the groups who are here as part of a larger delegation protesting crimes by U.S. military personnel stationed in Asia.

Based on information supplied by residents living near bases the "Okinawan Women Act Against Military Violence", has compiled a list of environmental ills blamed on the U.S military which has occupied bases on the Japanese island since World War II. The chronology, dating from 1957, includes reports of mutations on frogs, skin diseases among residents and it blames fuel leaks and oil spills for contaminating local crops and drinking supplies.

After local communities in Okinawa complained about the drinking water, officials began testing samples of earth and water in the areas near the bases. In 1996 they discovered toxic substances
including mercury and PCB near several bases.

It is very difficult to gather accurate information on the contaminants in the bases, says Toguchi Sumiko. Representatives of organisations in Okinawa are not allowed into the base areas to
conduct environmental surveys and all contamination studies, therefore, are conducted in surrounding communities. The studies cited by Sumiko and others showed that, while abnormally high rates of PCBs were found in women's breast milk in Naha City in 1973, currently the breast and ovarian cancer rates of women living near bases in Okinawa is higher than the figures for
the general population.

Local residents have also complained of the constant noise of military aircraft flying overhead as well as damage to homes and buildings from artillery shells that landed accidentally during firing practice.

"Okinawan people have been denied their right to land, ocean, sky and peace for more than 50 years," says Sumiko. Residents living near U.S. military bases in South Korea say they have had similar experiences of contaminated water and damage to property - as a result of artillery fire in base areas.

"Because the government has not responded to complaints of environmental contamination, we have brought our case to Washington," says Ahn Il Soon, a member of the National Campaign to
Eradicate Crime by U.S. Troops in Korea.

Besides their visit to the United States, activists also are seeking justice in the Korean Courts for damage caused to houses by artillery fire. More than 150 households are have filed a 20 million dollar suit against the United States for reparations, says Ahn. "Most of the time there is no buffer zone between the base and the nearby community," Ahn told IPS through a translator. "Even
when shells explode on the firing range inside the bases, village houses are sometimes damaged."

In photographs she brought to Washington, houses and crop fields are shown next to base property and firing ranges. Other pictures show streams near the base covered with oil. "While U.S.  soldiers are told not to drink the local water, ironically, the U.S. military activity is the cause of much of the water contamination," she says.

Several Japanese and Okinawan organisations also are protesting a US-Japanese proposal to build a heliport which would be built off the coast of the island of Henoko.

The construction, pollution and noise associated with the planned heliport would disturb the revered dugong, an aquatic mammal similar to the manatee that inhabits the coastal waters of Okinawa,
environmentalists say.

Groups in Asia and the United States also charge that while the United States diligently pursues clean-up efforts at military installations within the United States, its environmental procedures overseas, if it has any, are much weaker. While overseas base cleanup has no program element in the federal budget, domestic law requires the United States to require baseline environmental
surveys to discover hazardous sites, for example.

But while the groups push for a rigorous cleaning of the overseas bases, the U.S. Congress appears to be heading in the other direction by making it harder to secure funds for clean-up
activities.

The 1998 Authorization Bill for the Department of Defense, recently passed by the U.S. Senate, includes provisions that would require the Pentagon to have congressional approval even before it enters into a discussion with another country about settlement claims for cleaning up sites formerly used by the U.S. military.

These provisions were added after 100 million dollars was included in the budget for cleaning up formerly used military sites in Canada.

"Congress is going to make it very difficult to make any other kinds of settlements like Canada," says Vest.

Still, the Asian groups are determined to press for accountability from the Pentagon.

"There is a lot to do and it is not going to be easy," says Martha Matsuoka, a student at the University of California that helped organize the U.S. visit for the Asian organisations. "But, we are
in this for the long haul."