Furious Japan threatens to quit world whaling body

1.00pm

BERLIN - An irate Japan is considering withdrawing from the International Whaling Commission after the world body voted to do more to protect whales -- a sharp shift for an organisation that was set up to allow controlled whaling.

Today's vote exposed the deep splits within the 50-member commission -- between pro-whaling countries led by Japan and Norway, and those such as the United States, New Zealand, and many European states pushing to give greater protection to the planet's biggest mammals.

The polarised members of the IWC voted 25 to 20 to create a conservation committee that could make recommendations on tackling the threats facing whales, dolphins and porpoises.

Countries voting for the "Berlin Initiative" were: Australia, Austria, Argentina, Brazil, Chile, Finland, France, Germany, India, Ireland, Italy, Mexico, Monaco, Netherlands, New Zealand, Oman, Peru, Portugal, San Marino, South Africa, Spain, Sweden, Switzerland, United Kingdom, USA.

Countries voting against the initiative were: Antigua and Barbuda, Benin, China, Denmark, Dominica, Guinea, Iceland, Japan, Korea, Mongolia, Morocco, Nicaragua, Norway, Palau, Panama, Russia, St Kitts and Nevis, St Lucia, St Vincents and the Grenadines, Solomon Islands.

Grenada did not vote.

Around 300,000 marine mammals each year when they become entangled in fish nets, according to the World Wildlife Fund. Toxins in the oceans, climate change and the use of sonar also pose deadly dangers.

Green groups hailed the vote as a decisive step by a body that has achieved little but stalemate since its landmark decision in 1986 to suspend commercial whaling.

"This is excellent news. There is a crisis in our oceans," Richard Page, oceans campaigner for Greenpeace, told Reuters. "It should prioritise and strengthen the conservation agenda."

But Japan said it would not take part in the committee, expected to start work in 2004, and was reviewing its continued membership of the world whaling body, set up 57 years ago.

"A possibility is withdrawal from the commission itself," Japan's delegate, Masayuki Komatsu, said after the vote.

Japan carries out whaling for what it calls "scientific research", which is allowed by IWC rules, but opponents says it is merely a commercial whale hunt in disguise. Much of the meat ends up in restaurants and sushi bars.

Japan kills approximately 440 minke whales in the Southern Ocean Sanctuary each year as part of its "research" programme.

Before the vote, Japan had said a vote in favour of setting up the committee would be a final blow to the IWC, destroying its traditional role of managing whaling.

That view was shared by the High North Alliance, a Norwegian-based lobby group representing whalers and other Arctic communities, which condemned the motion sponsored by 18 IWC members as "one nail in the IWC coffin".

"This doesn't mean conservation, it means a ban on whaling," Alliance secretary Rune Frovik said before the vote. "The IWC's job is meant to be managing stocks, not banning all catches."

Norway continues to kill minke whales in defiance of the 1986 moratorium.

The World Council of Whalers today called for a new organisation to manage and regulate the commercial hunting of whales.

"It is clear that after decades of unsuccessful quarrelling through the Whaling Commission, no-one can find a way to compromise, which would pave the way for the orderly development of sustainable commercial whaling," the chairman of the Council, Tom Mexsis Happynook, said from Canada.

Mr Happynook said that, currently, the mandate as set out in the International Convention for the Regulation of Whaling (ICRW) was not being met, and it was time to explore possibilities of whaling nations managing sustainable commercial whaling through other means.

"The passing of the so-called Berlin Initiative at this year's meeting in Germany to strengthen the conservation agenda of the IWC is an example of two groups talking past each other – one thinking conservation meant total protection of all whale stocks regardless of abundance, while the other seeking regulated and monitored sustainable commercial whaling."

Mr Happynook said that the Whaling Commission's mandate was to bring about "the orderly development of the whaling industry" to manage sustainable commercial whaling.

"An alternative management organisation to the IWC is a very real solution to the continued disrespect for whaling people's social, cultural, economic and food requirements that is prevalent at the IWC. This suffering cannot continue," he said.

- REUTERS, HERALD STAFF