- TOKYO -- A bitter dispute
that has simmered for nearly two decades between pro- and anti-whale hunting
nations looks set to come to the boil next week when Japan will present
a plan to break with the International Whaling Commission (IWC) and form
its own pro-whaling organisation.
-
- Whaling supporters in Japan's ruling Liberal Democratic
Party (LDP) are threatening to sabotage the commission's annual meeting
in the Italian resort of Sorrento from 19 to 22 July by luring the IWC
members that still support commercial hunting into an alternative alliance
with pro-whaling nations, including Norway and Iceland.
-
- The plans are outlined in a paper, which the LDP lobby
group has handed to the BBC and which describes the IWC as "totally
dysfunctional".
-
- The move follows years of tension between Japan and the
IWC, which imposed a moratorium on commercial whale hunting in 1986 in
an attempt to prevent the extinction of a number of endangered species.
Debate about conservation versus hunting at IWC annual meetings since has
grown increasingly heated.
-
- Discussion about whale-hunting in Japan is tinged with
nationalism, with the LDP and the fishing industry often claiming that
anti-whaling countries are condemning a culture and tradition they know
little about.
-
- In one exchange at the 2001 IWC conference, a Japanese
fisheries agency official, Masuyuki Komatsu, said Westerners were "too
sentimental" about whales and called minke whales the "cockroaches
of the sea" because they eat other fish stocks. Tokyo has continued
to challenge the 1986 moratorium by engaging in what it controversially
calls "scientific whaling", designed to monitor fish stocks and
migration patterns, despite opposition from its allies and environmental
groups.
-
- Junko Sakurai, the spokeswoman on whaling for Greenpeace
Japan, said yesterday: "A new lobby group within the LDP has been
working hard since late last year to make whale meat more commercially
available. They have set up a working group to achieve this aim".
-
- © 2004 Independent Digital (UK) Ltd http://news.independent.co.uk/world/environment/story.jsp?story=541469
|
