Cyril D. Murphy, United's vice president for international affairs, said the only other area in the United States that comes close in importance is Chicago, where United is restricted to six flights a week to Japan.

Government officials from both countries began three days of negotiations today at the Prince Kuhio Federal Building downtown. The two sides appear to be close to an agreement and one likely outcome would be a substantial increase in traffic between Japan and Hawaii, said Murphy, who is in town to monitor the talks.

One new aspect of the current round of talks, which began in January, is an apparent willingness to approve code-sharing alliances between U.S. airlines and others in Japan and the rest of Asia, he said.

Those arrangements, where a U.S. carrier gets access to a foreign carrier's domestic market and vice versa, would bring a boom in Asia-Japan-U.S. travel like the trans-Atlantic boom that followed U.S.-Europe code sharing, he said.

Murphy said All Nippon Airways, which has about half of Japan's domestic market inside Japan but is restricted to daily service between Nagoya and Honolulu, would schedule many more flights here if a new agreement allows it.

"ANA would be unleashed. Hawaii is clearly their No. 1 priority" in the United States, he said. The talks are only for government officials but Murphy said he is here because United wants to stay close to what it sees as a vital process.

Talks reached a stalemate in August but resumed in January with both sides indicating some flexibility. Japan has resisted any reduction in JAL's rights that the United States said would be needed before other Japanese carriers get more U.S. access.

The United States has argued that Japan is not letting existing U.S. carriers exercise all the rights they have under the existing agreement, initially drawn up in 1952.