Summit Opens With Setback for Pro-whaling Nations

Pro-whaling countries led by Japan failed to muster a majority today that would have allowed them to set the agenda at the International Whaling Commission's annual meeting.

The failure will have pleased the British delegation, which is among those arguing against the return of commercial whaling after a ban of almost 20 years.

The British and other anti-whaling nations fear that the 66-member International Whaling Commission (IWC), which is meeting for five days from today in Ulsan, South Korea, is swinging back in favour of hunting the mammals.

But there was an early reverse today for pro-whalers when a Japanese proposal to remove discussion of whale sanctuaries from the agenda was voted down by 29 votes to 28. A second Japanese proposal, to introduce secret ballots, failed by 30 to 27.

Britain, along with the United States, New Zealand and Australia, has fought for 20 years to prevent the resumption of whaling, but the hunters - principally Japan, Norway and Iceland - have been recruiting a large number of small nations to their cause. Fourteen of the 62 members of the commission are small developing countries which receive aid from Japan and vote the same way as their benefactor on the majority of issues.

Votes from three quarters of the IWC's members are required to overturn the moratorium on commercial whaling.

Japan and its allies, including small island nations such as the Solomon Islands and St Kitts and Nevis, tried to argue that secret ballots protect smaller countries from intimidation by larger ones.

But, speaking after the motion on secret ballots was rejected, Patrick Ramage, director of communications at the US-based International Fund for Animal Welfare, said: "Transparency and democratic principles at the IWC are safe for another year."

The commission, which in the UK is based in Cambridge, banned commercial hunts in 1986. Norway, which objected to the original moratorium, holds the world's only commercial whaling season, in defiance of the ban. Japan kills whales for what it describes as "scientific research", but subsequently sells the meat on to markets and restaurants.

Legal loopholes mean that more whales will be killed this year than at any time since the mid-1980s. Japan, Norway and other nations are expected to kill more than 1,550 whales this year.

In a widely expected move, Japan said today it would potentially double its scientific whaling in the Antarctic Ocean, killing as many as 935 minke whales annually, up from 440, in a new programme beginning later this year.

It also said it would add humpback and fin whales to its research whaling, the first time those varieties would be included.

Earlier this month the US urged against any expansion in Tokyo's research hunting. A US research agency, National Oceanic and Atmospheric Administration, said any increase in the "number or type of whales killed and marketed under the guise of science is unacceptable".