By Denis Barnett
Sorrento, Italy - Pro- and anti-whaling nations locked horns on Monday at the beginning of a four-day meeting of the International Whaling Commission (IWC) amid growing support for an end to an 18-year moratorium on commercial whaling.
A row over the agenda set the tone as pro-whaling Japan attempted, and failed, to block issues which it insists have no place at the IWC - whale-watching, whale-killing methods and associated welfare issues.
"These are outside the competence of the IWC and non-essential, while leaving essential issues, such as proper management of whale stocks, unsolved," said Japan's commissioner Minoru Morimoto.
'The rest of the world doesn't seem to care' It drew support from a number of small developing countries like Mauritania which conservation groups allege simply toe the Japanese line because they benefit from lavish Japanese foreign aid.
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However, the move was blocked by an alliance of anti-whaling states, including Britain.
"They are indeed the legitimate competence of this organisation and it is vital that they are discussed," said Britain's commissioner Richard Cowan.
Japan later on Monday pushed for a secret ballot in IWC votes, strongly opposed by the United States, Germany and New Zealand, whose commissioner Geoffrey Palmer said it would be "a bloody great step backwards" for democracy within the IWC.
At a press conference by non-governmental organisations on the sidelines of the meeting, the environmental group WWF said countries would no longer be accountable to their citizens if Japan got its way on the secret ballot issue.
"I'm astonished that any democractic country in 2004 could be advocating more secrecy at an international forum such as this," a British official told the meeting.
Morimoto, in his opening statement to the meeting, said Japan had come to the "end of its patience" on the matter of the moratorium, in place since 1986, and reiterated its threat to pull out of the IWC if a return to commercial whaling could not be achieved by the 57th annual meeting next year.
Japan and Iceland currently take hundreds of whales each year, mostly minke and Bryde's whales, for so-called "scientific" purposes allowed under the IWC's rules.
However, Morimoto told the meeting Tokyo intended to "increase the take of whales in the North Pacific from this year." A spokesperson said later Japan would take 120 extra whales in the area, for a total of 380.
"We will also continue our whale research activities in the Antartic," he said, meaning Japan would continue to ignore a Southern Ocean whale sanctuary established a decade ago.
Japan currently takes 440 whales in the sanctuary, an area it continues to insist has no scientific justification.
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