Majority of whaling body snub Japanese meeting

JAPAN: Japan's latest attempt to end the two-decade old commercial whaling ban got off to a shaky start yesterday when fewer…

JAPAN:Japan's latest attempt to end the two-decade old commercial whaling ban got off to a shaky start yesterday when fewer than half the members of the International Whaling Commission (IWC) turned up for a rival meeting in Tokyo.

Just 34 of the 72 IWC member countries had registered at the three-day conference - organised by the Japan Fisheries Agency - at midday yesterday, after Britain, the US and three dozen other countries stayed away.

Tokyo's top whaling diplomat Joji Morishita admitted the boycott was disappointing. "We tried to make this meeting as open as possible but [ the boycotting nations] do not trust us because they thought they'd be seen to support whaling," he told delegates. "That's sad."

The "Conference for the normalisation of the IWC" is seen by some as a last-ditch attempt by a frustrated Japan to reverse the 1986 moratorium on commercial hunting of whales and swing the organisation from conservationism back to what it calls "managed whaling."

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"Normalising" is a code word for commercialising the IWC," said Junichi Sato of Greenpeace Japan. "Greenpeace believes the IWC needs to be reformed, but into a body that works for the whales and not the whalers."

Akmost six decades since it was set up, the commission is balanced on a knife-edge between bitterly opposed pro- and anti-whaling factions, after Japan led a narrow pro-whaling victory at last year's IWC annual conference in St Kitts. Environmentalists suspect that Tokyo is recruiting new members to the pro-whaling camp ahead of the next IWC annual meeting in Alaska this May.

In response, Britain launched an initiative this month calling for more countries to join the fight against a return of commercial whaling. "It is very sad that [British prime minister Tony] Blair is energetically recruiting for the anti-whaling side," said fisheries agency spokesman Hideki Moronuki. "We think it is the anti-whaling countries that should leave the IWC." Britain declined to attend the conference, saying it could "further polarise and distract" members of the commission.

Japan has directed about $470 million (€361 million) in fisheries aid since the mid-1990s toward the 22 mainly smaller African, Asian and Caribbean nations that have recently joined the pro-whaling side. But delegates from these counties who attended yesterday's conference along with Denmark, Switzerland, Iceland and Norway reacted angrily to suggestions that their votes had been "bought."

"That is a very unfortunate way of putting it," said Joanne Massiah of Antigua and Barbuda. "Developed nations have a responsibility to developing countries."

The fisheries agency has no chance of achieving the two-thirds vote it needs to overturn the whaling ban, but a majority would be an important symbolic victory. Failure is likely to increase calls for withdrawal from the IWC, which is why the Tokyo conference is important, said delegates.