Japan Coastal Guard announced Monday that it is seeking for 34 million yen (312,000 US dollars) in the country's fiscal 2006 budget for use to build a lighthouse on the so-called "Okinotori Island" in the Pacific.

According to Jiji News, the agency's move of building the lighthouse, to be made of fortifier plastic with solar energy system, attempts to confirm the uninhabited reef 1,700 km south of Tokyo as an existing "island".

According to Article 121 of the United Nations Convention on the Law of Sea, an island is a naturally formed area of land surrounded by water, which is above water at high tides. Rocks which cannot sustain human habitation or economic life of their own shall have no exclusive economic zones or continental shelves.

On Okinotori, there is no human life and it doesn't meet the conditions for economic operations. During high tides, merely two mattress-sized reefs are above the surface.

In June, Japan's Land, Infrastructure and Transport Ministry announced it has set up an address plate on the rock saying the it is "an island in the southmost end of Japan" and is "managed" by the ministry.

The Chinese government has stressed several times that China and Japan have different views over the nature of the Okinotori waters and the two sides should properly handle the problems arising therefrom through friendly negotiations.

Source: Xinhua