Victory for anti-whaling camp at Anchorage meeting

Jun 1, 2007, 0:47 GMT

Anchorage, Alaska - Anti-whaling countries won a moral victory Thursday on the last day of the International Whaling Commission's (IWC) annual meeting.

Thursday's 37-4 vote overturned a non-binding resolution pushed through by pro-whaling countries at last year's meeting.

The St Kitts and Nevis Declaration, named for the 2006 meeting's Caribbean host country, had called the current whaling ban unnecessary and said the IWC's mission should change from protecting whales to regulating commercial whaling. The 33-32 vote was far short of the three-fourths supermajority needed for a binding resolution.

The IWC, whose membership grew to 77 countries at the current meeting with additions including Croatia, Cyprus, Ecuador, Greece and Slovenia, has seen years of wrangling between pro-whaling countries led by Japan and an anti-whaling bloc that includes many European countries.

In recent years, both sides have raced to swell the IWC rolls with countries previously uninvolved in whaling.

Thursday's resolution, again far short of the needed supermajority for a binding measure, declared the existing moratorium on commercial whaling an important and necessary means to protect the marine mammals.