Accusations of dirty dealing swirled today as a divided International Whaling Commission neared the end of its annual meeting deeply split after a bid by native peoples to continue whale hunts was rejected.
A bitter power struggle between those who want to hunt whales commercially and those who want to protect them has dominated the five-day gathering in the Japanese whaling city of Shimonoseki.
The IWC today renewed a permit for the Makah people on the northwestern Pacific US coast to take five gray whales and approved a bid by the small Caribbean island of St. Vincent and The Grenadines to double its quota for humpback whales to four.
But a proposal to allow US and Russian indigenous peoples to hunt bowhead whales was voted down for the second time as a compromise that would have given a nod to Japan's demand to take 50 minke along its coast remained elusive following accusations of vote manipulation by the opposing camps.
Russia and the United States were outraged by the IWC's rejection last night of their request to renew permits for their native peoples to hunt whales, a practice allowed in the past to meet what are termed cultural and subsistence needs.
The rejection - the first of its kind by the 56-year-old IWC - followed several defeats for pro-whalers and a walkout by Iceland, whose bid for full membership was rejected.