TOKYO (AFP) -- The United States has told Japan that it will withdraw some 8,000 marines -- 1,000 more than originally proposed -- from the Japanese island of Okinawa as part of its military realignment, a report said Sunday.

The cut was increased after Washington reassessed its personnel needs, the mass-circulation Yomiuri Shimbun said, citing anonymous Japanese government sources.

In an interim report released last October, the U.S. and Japan said Washington would move 7,000 marines from Okinawa to Guam, reducing the size of its force on the southern Japanese island to 11,000.

The Yomiuri said the two governments had also entered the final phase of negotiations over the return of four U.S. bases on Okinawa.

They would include the new decisions in their final report to be released in late March, it said.

The United States intends to return the bases in tandem with the relocation of the US Marine Corps' Futenma Air Base to coastal areas of the existing Camp Schwab, the paper said.

Japan's defense agency has faced local opposition over the plan to relocate the air base within Okinawa rather than building it on a new site.

Tokyo and Washington have held marathon talks since 1996 on relocating Futenma air base out of the crowded urban center of Ginowan, where residents complain about aircraft noise.

No comment on the report was available from the defense agency on Sunday.

The bilateral deal over the US military realignment aims to ease the burden on communities hosting US forces, particularly in the tiny island chain of Okinawa, which hosts more than half of the 40,000 U.S. troops in Japan.