Commercial whaling opponents face tough fight at IWC meet

May 28, 2007, 23:26 GMT

Anchorage, Alaska/New York - Japan on Monday renewed its demands to lift the world-wide hunting ban on large whales at the four-day annual meeting of the International Whaling Commission (IWC) in Anchorage, Alaska, where hunting opponents are struggling to hang on to their majority.

The 76 country representatives are to vote on whether to maintain the 21-year-old worldwide moratorium on commercial whaling this week, a ban that faces the strongest challenge in years at the 59th meeting of the panel.

Japan, Norway and Iceland are leading the fight to to allow the resumption of hunting whales commercially. A Greenpeace observer described the mood at the convention hotel, with a view of whales swimming by in the Pacific Ocean, as aggressive and volatile.

Conservation groups and anti-whaling nations nearly lost their majority to pro-whaling countries at the 2006 meeting on the Caribbean island of St Kitts. Although pro-whaling countries had a majority, they fell short of the three-quarters majority needed to wipe out all quotas.

However, the anti-whaling camp has the advantage of five new countries - Croatia, Cyprus, Ecuador, Greece and Slovenia - being added since last year's meeting.

The anti-whaling camp was unlikely this year to push through protection for all 80 whale species instead of the 13 currently protected, observers said.

Even with the global moratorium in place, Japan harpoons about 700 whales a year for research and Norway has a commercial quota for more than 1,000 and Iceland killed about 60 last year.

The number of large whales hunted by IWC members increased in the five years between 2000 when 1,015 were killed to 1,921 hunted in 2005, according to the World Wide Fund for Nature.

Proponents of ending the 1986 moratorium argue that whales have been able to regenerate their populations.

Conservation groups charge Japan is using its power through financial aid to bring non-whale hunting countries like Laos to its side. Thilo Maack, the Greenpeace delegate, a marine biologist, said such tactics could lead to the extinction of the world's largest mammals.

Observers at the conference expressed concern that the whale hunting nations will block the quotas allowed indigenous people like the Inuits and Eskimos for the next five years, which apply to natives of Alaska, Canada, Greenland and Russia who use traditional hunting methods to catch whales for their own consumption and use.

Japan was expected to apply for similar rights for its coastal residents who also pursue traditional hunting methods