Whaling bid rejected
2005-06-21 11:27
South Korea - The International Whaling Commission on Tuesday rejected a bid by Japan to push through a document aimed at eventually resuming commercial whaling.
The measure, which would have required a three quarters majority, was voted down by 29 votes to 23, failing even to secure a simple majority of the 66-member bloc.
The commission has for more than a decade been working to agree on a system to manage whaling should a 19-year moratorium on the industry ever be lifted.
But while Japan said it considered its text a reasonable compromise, anti-whaling nations and environmentalists said the proposal fell well short of something they would ever approve.
"What is offered up here is an insult," said New Zealand's Conservation Minister Chris Carter. "It represents a return to the dirty deals of the past. This is completely unacceptable."
Adopting the text, he said "would be the most retrograde step imaginable".
"It's the sort of fisheries plan that most nations who take sustainable management seriously wouldn't even apply to sardines or cod," Australian Environment Minister Ian Campbell said.
Environmentalists said the document failed to address any of its major objections, such as the suffering of whales under different killing techniques and how commercial catches will be independently regulated.
Japan, which already kills some 650 whales a year under a research programme, has been pushing for a resumption of full-scale commercial catches, saying that depleted whale stocks have sufficiently recovered since the 1986 moratorium came into force.
On the net:
www.iwcoffice.org
www.greenpeace.org.uk