WASHINGTON (AFP) - The United States said Tuesday its top diplomat for Asia would visit Tokyo later in the week to pursue an "intense dialogue" with Japan's new center-left government amid a row over an air base.

State Department spokesman Ian Kelly said Secretary of State for East Asian and Pacific Affairs Kurt Campbell, the top US diplomat for Asia who is currently visiting Myanmar, would visit Tokyo on Thursday.

"He'll continue the bilateral negotiations that we have," Kelly told reporters when asked if opposition to the air base on the island of Okinawa could harm President Barack Obama's upcoming visit to Japan.

"We have a new government in place in Tokyo. We've started an intense dialogue with them. Our position on the agreements that we have for basing hasn't changed," Kelly said.

"We think that this is the best way forward in our security relationship with Japan," Kelly said.

The US-Japan relationship is "very deep" and "will continue to be an important relationship," he added.

Kelly said only Tokyo can decide on the type of security ties it has with Washington when asked if there are US fears that Prime Minister Yukio Hatoyama may fulfill a campaign pledge to move the base off the island.

"We are there in Japan because of our common interests.... and a mutual security arrangement," he said.

He added that the security relationship is conducted in "complete transparency and in partnership" with the Japanese government.

Hatoyama's government has promised to review a 2006 bilateral agreement on the roughly 47,000 US troops based in Japan -- including the scheduled move of the airbase on Okinawa island from an urban area to a coastal region by 2014.

Many Okinawans oppose the American presence and want the controversial US Marine Corps Futenma Air Base closed and moved off the island, rather than having it relocated to the coastal Camp Schwab site as previously agreed.

US government and military officials have stressed that Washington is in no mood to reopen talks on a deal that was years in the making.

Hatoyama has said the issue is unlikely to be resolved before Obama's November 12-13 visit, while his ministers have floated sometimes contradictory ideas about how to resolve the issue.