Japan threatened yesterday to walk out of the International Whaling Commission's annual meeting next week if the group adopts a resolution Tokyo says puts too much emphasis on protecting whales.
The move would be the latest upset for an organization increasingly polarized between pro-whaling nations such as Japan and Norway and those opposed, including the US, Australia and Britain.
At issue in the upcoming IWC annual meeting, to open Monday in Berlin, is a 31-page proposal to form a conservation committee within the 48-nation IWC that would be charged with "strengthening the conservation agenda."
The resolution is sponsored by 19 countries, including Mexico, the US, Britain and Australia, and calls for, among other things, working with other global wildlife groups to better protect whales.
Japan, one of the world's leading whaling nations, says the proposal focuses too much on conservation at the expense of attaining sustainable harvests.
"We will definitely work against it," said Takanori Nagatomo, a whaling official with Japan's fisheries ministry. "It is unacceptable, and a walkout is possible if it passes."
Japan's strong talk underlines the divisions within the IWC over the state of world whale populations and whether the 1986 global ban on commercial whaling should be lifted. Pro-whaling nations say IWC membership is stacked against them and cite as evidence the group's refusal to grant membership to Iceland, a pro-whaling stronghold.
At last year's IWC meeting, hosted by Japan, delegates from Iceland stormed out following the rejection of their membership bid for the second year in a row.
Iceland has had non-voting observer status since its delegates quit an IWC meeting 10 years ago to protest the commission's anti-whaling stance.
Japan said it will also ask the IWC in Berlin for a special quota on minke whales to be hunted in the country's coastal waters. Japan likens the proposed quota to those granted to Aboriginal whale hunters in places like Alaska and Greenland.
But Japanese requests for such quotas have been rejected for the past 15 years, Nagatomo said. Last year, Japan asked for a 50-whale quota.
Although commercial whaling was banned 17 years ago, Japan is permitted by the IWC to conduct restricted "research" hunts. The country's whaling fleet kills hundreds of whales every year in far-flung waters around the world.
The Japanese government says the hunts help gauge the impact of whale herds on fisheries stocks and provide data on their migration patterns and population trends.
Critics call the program commercial whaling in disguise because the meat from the slaughtered whales is sold later to wholesalers and ends up in Japanese restaurants, where it is considered a delicacy.
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