Japan Dealt 2 Setbacks at Whaling Commission

Countries opposed to commercial whale hunting won a surprise initial victory at the opening session of the International Whaling Commission’s annual meeting Friday, but conservationists warned that Japan could still take control before the session ends Tuesday.

Members voted 32 to 30 to address the issue of protecting dolphins and porpoises. However, the vote occurred before representatives of two of the small countries that pro-whaling Japan has been courting arrived at the meeting on the Caribbean island of St. Kitts.

A Japanese effort to introduce secret ballots in commission decisions -- apparently to allow the small countries that vote with Tokyo to escape moral rebuke -- also failed.

The small-cetaceans program within the IWC is one of several conservation issues Japan wants eliminated in its push to transform the body, which seeks to balance preservation and protection of the global stocks of endangered mammals with the need for “scientific whaling,” allegedly conducted for research purposes.

Japan has continued to kill whales in the name of science since the IWC imposed a ban on commercial hunting in 1986, a decision made after environmental and animal rights groups exposed the brutality of whale-hunting practices and the suffering of harpooned whales.

Both defeats for Japan occurred in part because of the unexpected positions taken by Belize, a small Central American country that has received aid from Japan and previously had supported its positions.

Japan has amassed considerable clout on the commission by lobbying small Caribbean, African and Pacific nations -- most with no whaling interests -- through aid to their fisheries programs or other financial support. Tokyo denies that it has bought the backing of such developing nations, but evidence has surfaced in recent years that it has paid IWC dues and travel expenses for some of the countries.

Anti-whaling activists noted that delegates were still arriving and that other crucial votes in the five-day session could reduce or even eliminate IWC programs aimed at conservation.

Japan wants the IWC to return to its original role as an organization that solely manages whaling, a proposal Japan refers to as “normalization” and which will come up for a vote during the session. Majority support for the proposal would strip the commission of responsibility for conservation of whales and small cetaceans.

After the first votes were taken, Togo, which has sided with Japan, paid its delinquent dues and recouped voting rights for the rest of the session. Gambia also gained voting rights too late to cast a ballot on the conservation issue.

Senegal’s delegation was expected to arrive today, and “it’s traditional for more stealth countries to come to Japan’s rescue,” said Buffy Baumann, oceans campaigner for Greenpeace.

The environmental group sent its ship Arctic Sunrise to moor within sight of the conference in a gesture protesting any weakening of the whaling ban. But St. Kitts authorities denied it entry.

Japan also has reportedly sought support for a censure of Greenpeace stemming from an incident in January when the Arctic Sunrise collided with the Japanese fish-processing ship Nisshin Maru in the Southern Ocean Whale Sanctuary.

The Japanese whalers accused Greenpeace of ramming their vessel, but Greenpeace spokeswoman Jane Kochersperger said the Arctic Sunrise was the victim of hostility from the Japanese crew when protesters deployed in small inflatable boats to paint “Whale Meat From Sanctuary” on the side of a supply ship.

After losing the first two initiatives to steer the IWC out of the conservation business, the head of the Japanese delegation, Joji Morishita, told journalists that he wasn’t obsessed with winning over a majority of the commission’s 70 members. But he made clear Japan’s continued desire to repeal the whale ban.

“We want to make sure we can get countries to accept the fact that we can at some point move to sustainable commercial hunting of whales,” Morishita said.