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SYDNEY—Australia
will push the International Whaling Commission (IWC) to
stop Japan from killing whales in the name of research
once the global body meets in London.
Prime
Minister Kevin Rudd’s government is leading calls for
Japan to end its annual expedition to Antarctica, where
as many as 1,000 minke and fin whales may be killed this
year.
Scientific research must be “brought under the direct
scrutiny and authority of the Commission,” Environment
Minister Peter Garrett said in a statement, adding the
body must stop “individual countries unilaterally
granting themselves permission to kill whales for
science.”
Japan
says its annual hunt is necessary to prove whale
populations have recovered enough to justify a return to
commercial whaling, which was banned by the IWC in 1986.
Japan wants to overturn the global moratorium and will
need a three-quarters majority if a vote is taken at the
organization’s next annual meeting in Santiago, Chile,
in June.
Australia,
which is sending five delegates to the London
conference, is calling on the IWC to introduce plans to
protect whales from threats including climate change,
marine pollution and collisions with shipping, Garrett
said.
The
78-member body must “take a more coordinated and
strategic approach to research and introduce new
collaborative nonlethal research programs, beginning in
the Southern Ocean,” he said.
The
Southern Ocean, which extends from the coast of
Antarctica to 60 degrees south latitude, is the fourth
largest of the world’s five oceans.
Rudd’s
government, which won office in November after 11 years
in opposition, pledged during the election campaign to
take a tougher stance against whaling than former Prime
Minister John Howard.
Earlier
this year, the government sent a customs vessel to
monitor the research hunt and gather evidence on whether
Japan is breaching the moratorium, in preparation for
possible international legal action.
Research
whaling is allowed under the terms of the moratorium.
Meat from whales killed on the expeditions is sold in
Japan as “research byproduct.”
The
issue has threatened to strain ties between the
governments in Tokyo and Canberra. Minoru Morimoto,
director general of
Japan’s
Institute for Cetacean Research which runs the hunt, has
accused Australia of “hypocrisy” and “intransigence” in
lobbying against whaling.
Japan
wants the IWC to monitor commercial hunts, rather than
aim to eliminate whaling.
It will
call on commission members to help stop antiwhaling
activists, such as the Sea Shepherd Conservation
Society, from trying to sabotage its Antarctic
expedition, Foreign Ministry press secretary Kazuo
Kodama told reporters in Tokyo last week.
Sea
Shepherd activists earlier this week threw bottles of
butyric acid onto the deck of one of the ships in the
Japanese fleet. The group’s Steve Irwin vessel is
shadowing the fleet in a bid to disrupt the hunt.
The
three-day meeting in
London
was called by IWC Chairman William Hogarth in an attempt
to break the impasse between anti- and pro-whaling
countries.
More
than 40 countries, including the UK, the US, New
Zealand, Iceland and Finland are scheduled to attend.
No
binding decisions will be adopted at the conference in
London and any ideas are expected to be raised in
Santiago later this year. (Bloomberg) |
