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Japan and Norway attacking the International Whaling Commission. Again.
Pro-whaling nations huddle in Tokyo, saying global whaling body on 'last legs'
Two of the world's last whaling nations, Japan and Norway, lashed out at the International Whaling Commission on Wednesday, saying the organization was "on its last legs" and lacked credibility because it didn't approve of limited commercial hunts. Participants at a special meeting of whaling nations in Tokyo honed their call for an end to the IWC's moratorium on commercial whaling. Delegates from Iceland and several Caribbean nations also were at the meeting. Whaling nations' failed attempts to overturn the 1986 ban on commercial whaling have led to a deadlock at the IWC, sharpening differences between member nations who favor limited whaling and those who oppose it.
On Wednesday, Japanese Fisheries Agency official Joji Morishita called the commission dysfunctional, while Norway's IWC ambassador Odd Gunnar Skagestad said internal divisions had undercut the commission's global role. "The commission has lost so much relevance and so much credibility that it certainly gives the impression that it is on its last legs," Skagestad said. To restore trust, the commission must come up with a system that balances demands for whale hunting with worries about excessive harvests, Skagestad said. Environmentalists and antiwhaling nations, led by the United States, Britain, and Australia, have blamed Norway and Japan for the current impasse.
Last year's IWC convention in Shimonoseki, Japan, ended without addressing much of the 49-nation commission's agenda. The group could face more contentious debate at this year's meeting in Berlin, Germany, in June. Iceland, which was voted back into the commission in October after leaving it a decade earlier, backs a lifting of the moratorium. Iceland said it would not authorize commercial whaling by its vessels before 2006. But it is considering asking the IWC for a scientific permit to hunt whales for research, the country's whaling commissioner Stefan Asmundsson said. Iceland ended research whaling in 1989.
The only other nation with IWC approval for scientific hunts is Japan, which started its program in 1987. Tokyo says it is researching claims that whale populations have recovered from over-hunting and can again be killed for commercial purposes. Critics of Japan's research say the hunts are commercial whaling in disguise because the government sells leftover meat from the killed whales to wholesalers and much of it ends up in restaurants.
=> http://www.enn.com/news/2003-02-13/s_2654.asp
Pro-whaling nations huddle in Tokyo, saying global whaling body on 'last legs'
Two of the world's last whaling nations, Japan and Norway, lashed out at the International Whaling Commission on Wednesday, saying the organization was "on its last legs" and lacked credibility because it didn't approve of limited commercial hunts. Participants at a special meeting of whaling nations in Tokyo honed their call for an end to the IWC's moratorium on commercial whaling. Delegates from Iceland and several Caribbean nations also were at the meeting. Whaling nations' failed attempts to overturn the 1986 ban on commercial whaling have led to a deadlock at the IWC, sharpening differences between member nations who favor limited whaling and those who oppose it.
On Wednesday, Japanese Fisheries Agency official Joji Morishita called the commission dysfunctional, while Norway's IWC ambassador Odd Gunnar Skagestad said internal divisions had undercut the commission's global role. "The commission has lost so much relevance and so much credibility that it certainly gives the impression that it is on its last legs," Skagestad said. To restore trust, the commission must come up with a system that balances demands for whale hunting with worries about excessive harvests, Skagestad said. Environmentalists and antiwhaling nations, led by the United States, Britain, and Australia, have blamed Norway and Japan for the current impasse.
Last year's IWC convention in Shimonoseki, Japan, ended without addressing much of the 49-nation commission's agenda. The group could face more contentious debate at this year's meeting in Berlin, Germany, in June. Iceland, which was voted back into the commission in October after leaving it a decade earlier, backs a lifting of the moratorium. Iceland said it would not authorize commercial whaling by its vessels before 2006. But it is considering asking the IWC for a scientific permit to hunt whales for research, the country's whaling commissioner Stefan Asmundsson said. Iceland ended research whaling in 1989.
The only other nation with IWC approval for scientific hunts is Japan, which started its program in 1987. Tokyo says it is researching claims that whale populations have recovered from over-hunting and can again be killed for commercial purposes. Critics of Japan's research say the hunts are commercial whaling in disguise because the government sells leftover meat from the killed whales to wholesalers and much of it ends up in restaurants.
=> http://www.enn.com/news/2003-02-13/s_2654.asp
