Japanese police have issued an arrest warrant for a US Marine Corps officer over the alleged attempted rape of a foreign woman.

The alleged incident took place in Okinawa, a string of tiny islands at the southern tip of the Japanese archipelago that hosts 26,000 of the 48,000 US military personnel in the country.

No official US response has yet been given to the request to hand over the suspect, although the Reuters news agency reported that the US ambassador to Tokyo, Howard Baker, said he would cooperate with the investigation.

The woman was assaulted in a car at about 0130 local time on 2 November, a Japanese police spokesman said in the Okinawan capital, Naha.

"The man tried to rape a woman in a car. But he failed to accomplish his purpose because the woman resisted furiously," the spokesman reportedly said.

"Then the man threw her cell phone and broke it."

He would not give any other details about the woman.

Tense presence

The incident threatens to reignite Japanese anger over the behaviour of some US servicemen and the special treaty provisions for their treatment in cases where they are accused of criminal acts.

The Sofa treaty is also a sensitive subject in South Korea

Resentment runs particularly high in Okinawa, which, despite making up less than 1% of the Japanese landmass, has hosted a large proportion of the US forces in Japan since the end of World War II.

In March, US airman Timothy Woodland was sentenced to 32 months in a Japanese prison for the June 2001 rape of a local woman.

But Washington's delay in handing him over to Japanese authorities once again stirred debate about the Status of Forces Agreement (Sofa) which governs the legal status of US troops in Japan.

The recent acquittal of US servicemen who ran over and killed two girls in Korea also sparked protests about the US military presence there.