JAPAN:Japan has rejected a call by anti-whaling countries to abandon a "deeply provocative" plan to kill 50 humpback whales later this year, but hinted at a possible deal to limit the size of the hunt in return for concessions on commercial whaling.
Britain joined New Zealand, Australia and other so-called like-minded nations in condemning the plan in Anchorage, Alaska, where the annual conference of the International Whaling Commission (IWC) opened yesterday.
"It's a very hot button as far as Australia and New Zealand is concerned," said New Zealand's environment minister Chris Carter.
"Including them [ the humpbacks] is a very provocative and unhelpful act. This is a development that will really adversely affect the image of Japan in our countries." Japanese whaling ships intend to kill the humpbacks in the Southern Ocean Whale Sanctuary as part of its "scientific whaling" programme. The ships will also hunt hundreds of minke, sei, sperm and fin whales.
The humpback is classed by most environmentalists as one of the planet's more imperilled species, but not by Japan's fisheries agency. "We don't see it as endangered," said Joji Morishita, Tokyo's alternate IWC commissioner. "Our surveys suggest that in some areas humpback stocks are increasing by over 10 per cent per year." Mr Morishita also said, however, that his delegation was "open-minded" on the humpback issue.
Conservationists have long suspected that Japan might use the plan to kill one of the planet's more beloved animals as a bargaining chip in its efforts to secure a return to small-scale commercial whaling by its coastal communities.
But the overture was rejected by Britain's biodiversity minister, Barry Gardiner, who said the humpback issue was not "a matter of horse trading and negotiations".
Conservationists say that scientific whaling is illegal and that the IWC should stop it, despite threats from the pro-whaling nations that blocking compromise will push them into a corner.
Some fear that a frustrated Japan may attempt to block quotas for aboriginal subsistence whaling in Alaska and other communities if it fails to win concessions at this year's conference, or that it may finally walk out of the whaling body altogether.
Japan has never accepted the conservationist takeover of the IWC and has waged a $750 million Official Development Assistance (ODA) campaign to swing the organisation back to support for commercial whaling. Last year, it won a narrow vote for the first time in a quarter of a century, a symbolic victory that stunned environmentalists.
That victory was short-lived. Six new anti-whaling nations have signed up while Japan has reportedly managed to recruit just one: Laos. Several poorer pro-whaling nations failed to appear at yesterday's conference and the three-quarter majority pro-whalers need to secure a resumption of commercial whaling looks further away than ever.
Outgoing British prime minister Tony Blair wrote a letter to the IWC which was read out at yesterday's conference.
"Many populations have not recovered from past over-exploitation and now face other serious man-made threats such as pollution and climate change," said Mr Blair, who called for an end to all but limited aboriginal whaling.