New Zealand has joined forces with Britain and Australia in a diplomatic bid to prevent Japan taking control of the International Whaling Commission (IWC), New Zealand Prime Minister Helen Clark said yesterday.
Possible Japanese control of a majority of votes on the body was "of real concern," although it was important to note that Japan's majority was only on paper, she said. Japan had a paper majority last year but still lost crucial motions when support nations either did not attend or were absent during key votes.
"We've been concerned for a number of years because Japan has been steadily recruiting small developing countries to its cause," Clark told radio network NewstalkZB.
New Zealand was talking to many small nations that have joined the commission and voted with Japan after receiving aid packages from the pro-whaling nation, she said.
Conservation Minister Chris Carter said it was also part of a concerted diplomatic effort with Australia and the Britain to encourage anti-whaling nations to attend the IWC's next meeting in St. Kitts and Nevis next month.
New Zealand's IWC commissioner Sir Geoffrey Palmer said while the prospects of anti-whaling states losing a 50 percent majority had been high last year, "we think they're much higher this year."
Numbers joining the IWC in recent years have been "about two to one" in favor of pro-whaling states, he told National Radio.
A simple majority would not allow Japan to reintroduce commercial whaling -- which requires a 75 percent majority -- but would allow it to choose the commission's chairman, abolish its conservation committee and install secret ballots so nations supporting it could avoid scrutiny.
It would also allow it to more easily expand its scientific whaling program, which is "commercial whaling ... carried out by Japan in the southern oceans [each] year," Palmer said.
"If a further, approved system of international commercial whaling occurs that would be a tragedy," he said.
Japan has consistently denied buying votes at the IWC or that its annual research program is commercial whaling in another guise.
Chinese President Xi Jinping (習近平) is to visit Russia next month for a summit of the BRICS bloc of developing economies, Chinese Minister of Foreign Affairs Wang Yi (王毅) said on Thursday, a move that comes as Moscow and Beijing seek to counter the West’s global influence. Xi’s visit to Russia would be his second since the Kremlin sent troops into Ukraine in February 2022. China claims to take a neutral position in the conflict, but it has backed the Kremlin’s contentions that Russia’s action was provoked by the West, and it continues to supply key components needed by Moscow for
Japan scrambled fighter jets after Russian aircraft flew around the archipelago for the first time in five years, Tokyo said yesterday. From Thursday morning to afternoon, the Russian Tu-142 aircraft flew from the sea between Japan and South Korea toward the southern Okinawa region, the Japanese Ministry of Defense said in a statement. They then traveled north over the Pacific Ocean and finished their journey off the northern island of Hokkaido, it added. The planes did not enter Japanese airspace, but flew over an area subject to a territorial dispute between Japan and Russia, a ministry official said. “In response, we mobilized Air Self-Defense
CRITICISM: ‘One has to choose the lesser of two evils,’ Pope Francis said, as he criticized Trump’s anti-immigrant policies and Harris’ pro-choice position Pope Francis on Friday accused both former US president Donald Trump and US Vice President Kamala Harris of being “against life” as he returned to Rome from a 12-day tour of the Asia-Pacific region. The 87-year-old pontiff’s comments on the US presidential hopefuls came as he defied health concerns to connect with believers from the jungle of Papua New Guinea to the skyscrapers of Singapore. It was Francis’ longest trip in duration and distance since becoming head of the world’s nearly 1.4 billion Roman Catholics more than 11 years ago. Despite the marathon visit, he held a long and spirited
China would train thousands of foreign law enforcement officers to see the world order “develop in a more fair, reasonable and efficient direction,” its minister for public security has said. “We will [also] send police consultants to countries in need to conduct training to help them quickly and effectively improve their law enforcement capabilities,” Chinese Minister of Public Security Wang Xiaohong (王小洪) told an annual global security forum. Wang made the announcement in the eastern city of Lianyungang on Monday in front of law enforcement representatives from 122 countries, regions and international organizations such as Interpol. The forum is part of ongoing