Japan hits out at 'polarised' whaling council
Staff and agencies
Friday June 16, 2006
Guardian Unlimited
The Japanese government today threatened to pull out of the International Whaling Commission unless the ban on commercial killing is overturned.
Jouji Morishita, the director of international negotiations on whaling for the Japanese Fisheries Agency, said the IWC was "polarised" and failing to effectively manage the world's whales as a resource.
Speaking as representatives from 70 countries attended the opening of the IWC's annual meeting on the Caribbean island of St Kitts, Mr Morishita denied that Japan was bribing other countries with offers of aid to secure their support for a restoration of commercial whaling.
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"We have never done that, he told BBC Radio 4's Today programme. "The Japanese government has never been involved in such activities."
Mr Morishita insisted he did not want uncontrolled whaling, but the enforcement of a scientific formula devised by the IWC for managed catches in sustainable areas.
"Overturning the ban has some misunderstanding. It sounds like there would be no control," he said. "But overturning the ban from our point of view is a resumption of managed whaling.
"The IWC is, we think, very polarised and not working as a resource management organisation. We like to make progress to normalising this organisation so that this organisation can manage whaling while protecting endangered and depleted species.
"However, if we cannot normalise this IWC, I don't think this organisation has a reason to exist."
A ban on commercial whaling has been in force since 1986. However, Japan wants a restoration of the trade amid claims that some endangered whale species have successfully replenished.
For the past two decades, Japan and Iceland have continued whale hunting by using a loophole to claim it is being done for scientific purposes. However, whale meat is regularly sold in Japanese shops and restaurants.
Norway is the only country that ignores the moratorium and openly conducts commercial whaling.
Environmental organisations fear pro-whaling nations are poised to regain dominance of the IWC following intense Japanese lobbying.
In the Caribbean, Japan has given six countries - St Lucia, St Vincent, Antigua, Dominica, Grenada and St Kitts - more than $100m (£54m) in fishing aid since 1998. Most have backed it on whaling.
Anti-whaling campaigners claim Japan is attempting to gain the support of other countries - some of them landlocked - in order to obtain a pro-whaling IWC majority.
Although it is considered unlikely that Japan will obtain the 75% margin required to overturn the whaling ban, a simple majority could enable it to pass sweeping changes.
"They'll be able to control the voice of the IWC and make statements under the organisation's banner in support of commercial whaling," Bill Hogarth, the head of the US delegation - which votes with anti-whaling countries such as Britain, Australia and New Zealand - said.
The meeting will be a fight for "the heart and soul" of the IWC, Vassili Papastavrou, a whale biologist for the International Fund for Animal Welfare, warned.
"It will be in the hands of the whalers for the first time since the 1970s," he said. "It's like putting the fox in charge of the hen house."
Raphael Archibald, a spokesman for the St Kitts delegation, said the focus should shift from strict conservation to sustainable fishing and whaling.
"There are stocks of whales that are very abundant," he said. "What's the idea of having them just there, increasing, increasing and increasing?"
Mr Archibald said secret ballots were needed to protect countries from those who disagree with their votes. St Kitts typically votes for whale hunting, but claims its tourism industry suffers as a result. Iceland, Norway and Japan have killed 2,500 whales in the past 12 months - more than in any year since the ban came into effect.
Earlier this week, the Greenpeace ship Arctic Sunrise, which took part in a campaign to block Japanese whalers operating in the south Atlantic earlier this year, was banned from entering St Kitts waters.
"We are shocked that St Kitts has banned the Arctic Sunrise, and can only assume that the government of Japan has convinced the authorities to prevent us from entering in the hope that our criticism of whaling will be silenced," John Bowler, of Greenpeace International, said.