The incident may reignite resentment of US forces on the tropical island chain, located some 1,600 km southwest of Tokyo, as well as sparking renewed calls to revise a key treaty governing US military personnel in Japan.

The soldier, Major Michael J. Brown, 39, voluntarily went to Okinawa police on Wednesday and answered questions for more than four hours, Kyodo news agency said, adding that, as in previous questioning, he had denied any wrongdoing.

Tokyo has formally requested that Brown be handed over to the Japanese authorities in connection with the incident. The US authorities have yet to reach a decision.

Anti-American sentiment is also on the rise in neighbouring South Korea after a road accident in which a US Army vehicle crushed two schoolgirls to death, prompting calls to revise a similar treaty there.

Japanese Prime Minister Junichiro Koizumi called on the US military to take steps to prevent criminal incidents.

"We must strongly urge that the military improve their attitude and take steps to prevent a recurrence of this sort of crime," he told reporters.

Brown is alleged to have tried to rape a woman in her car on November 2, but she fought off the attack. Police have declined to give details about the woman, but Kyodo news agency has said she was from the Philippines.

A spokesman for the US Embassy in Tokyo said the incident was being taken very seriously.

"The suspect is in US custody and we are cooperating fully with the Japanese side in the investigation," he added.

Residents of Okinawa have long resented what they see as their unfair burden in hosting 26,000 of the 48,000 US military personnel in the country as part of the US-Japan security alliance, a pillar of Tokyo's postwar foreign policy.

Incidents involving the US military, including the notorious 1995 rape of a 12-year-old Japanese girl by three servicemen, have fanned resentment and prompted calls to shift the troops elsewhere or reduce them, which the central government -- anxious to avoid ruffling ties -- is in general keen to avoid.

In March this year, US airman Timothy Woodland was found guilty of raping a Japanese woman in June 2001 and sentenced to 32 months in a Japanese jail.

The rape, and Washington's delay in surrendering Woodland to Japanese authorities, soured relations between the two nations and reignited calls for a revision of the Status of Forces Agreement, which governs the conduct of US military in Japan.

(China Daily December 5, 2002)