Secretary of State Hillary Clinton said Monday she will stress how the half- century-long US-Japanese alliance is central for security in Asia when she meets her Japanese counterpart Katsuya Okada in Hawaii. Speaking to reporters on a refueling stop in California, Clinton suggested the alliance would trump the current tension over the relocation of a US airbase on Okinawa island. 'The significance of our meeting is to reaffirm the centrality of our 50-year- old alliance,' Clinton said. 'It provides stability for the region... It is much bigger than any one particular issue,' she said. In Tokyo, Yomiuri newspaper and other Japanese reports said Sunday that Clinton and Okada will make final arrangements for a statement stressing the crucial contribution of their alliance to global peace. 'The governments are preparing for the statement, with which Prime Minister Yukio Hatoyama and President (Barack) Obama will celebrate the 50th anniversary and commit to further deepen the alliance,' Japanese Defense Minister Toshimi Kitazawa said, according to Jiji Press. The security treaty, signed on January 19, 1960, has formed the bedrock of the post-war Japan-US alliance, under which pacifist Japan relies on a massive US military presence to guarantee its security. Tokyo's relations with its most important ally have hit turbulence over the controversial Futenma air base, which Hatoyama has suggested should be moved off the southern island of Okinawa or even outside Japan altogether. The center-left Hatoyama, who took power in September, has pledged to review past agreements on the US military presence, including plans to shift Futenma within Okinawa, and to deal with Washington on a more 'equal' basis. Joseph Nye, a former assistant secretary of defense, urged the Obama administration to be patient with the Hatoyama government and not allow 'a second-order issue to threaten our long-term strategy for East Asia.' In a commentary in the New York Times last week, Nye said: 'The two countries will miss a major opportunity if they let the base controversy lead to bitter feelings or the further reduction of American forces in Japan. 'The best guarantee of security in a region where China remains a long-term challenge and a nuclear North Korea poses a clear threat remains the presence of American troops, which Japan helps to maintain with generous host nation support,' Nye wrote. Kurt Campbell, the US assistant secretary of state for Asia and Pacific affairs, said Clinton and Okada will also discuss security concerns over the nuclear ambitions of both North Korea and Iran. They will also talk about China's rising power, as well as the military junta in Myanmar. Clinton will meet with the US military's Pacific Command and visit the USS Arizona Memorial, which commemorates the Americans who died in the Japanese surprise attack on December 7, 1941 that brought the United States into World War II. She will arrive in Port Moresby on Thursday to discuss economic development and efforts to combat climate change. It will be the first visit to Papua New Guinea by a US secretary of state since Madeleine Albright visited in 1998. On January 15, Clinton will travel to Auckland, New Zealand to discuss a range of diplomatic, economic, and security-related issues, Campbell said. She travels to January 17 to Melbourne and Canberra, Australia. In Canberra, Clinton and US Defense Secretary Robert Gates will hold the 25th Australia-United States Ministerial Consultations with counterparts Foreign Minister Stephen Smith and Defense Minister John Faulkner. In both New Zealand and Australia, she will likely discuss these two countries troop contributions to Afghanistan. Highlighting the region's growing international clout, Clinton is making her fourth tour of Asia since she became secretary of state one year ago. Hatoyama's move to shift the Futenma base off Okinawa or even outside Japan altogether, would breach an agreement signed in 2006 between previous conservative governments in Washington and Tokyo. Since its defeat in World War II, officially pacifist Japan has relied on a massive US military presence to guarantee its security, initially as an occupier and later as an ally. But the dispute over Futenma has raised fears among some Japanese that this alliance might cool, at a time when a rising China is making its presence felt across Asia. 