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Japan blasts Australia on whale haven plan
By ANDREW DARBY ADELAIDE Tuesday 4 July 2000 R E L A T E D Japanese flex their muscles over whale meet Comment: We have no right to ban whaling
Japan has launched a strident attack on Australia, accusing Canberra of double standards for campaigning against whaling while sanctioning the killing of kangaroos.
On the eve of a crucial vote on a South Pacific whale sanctuary, Japan also told Australia to leave the International Whaling Commission (IWC) if it could not back controlled whaling.
The rebuke was delivered by Japan's IWC commissioner, Minoru Morimoto, ahead of today's vote in Adelaide on the whale sanctuary proposed by Australia, which is now expected to fail.
In a long opening statement that made no reference to any other conservation nation, Mr Morimoto challenged Australian objections to the killing of minke whales.
'Minke whales have been referred to as the rabbits of the sea because of their high reproductive rate and abundant populations,' Mr Morimoto said.
'Perhaps if we named them the kangaroos of the sea, the Australian public and (Environment Minister) Senator (Robert) Hill would support their sustainable use.'
Senator Hill refused to respond at a press conference. 'I don't think it is particularly productive,' he said. 'The issue we're addressing here is whaling and ... we should concentrate on that.'
Senator Hill has called on the IWC to move towards the conservation and non-lethal use of whales in business such as whale watching, but Mr Morimoto said this was against the mandate of the organisation, which is to manage commercial whaling.
'If Senator Hill does not agree with the specified purpose ... we suggest that he take Australia out of the IWC.'
A Japanese delegation spokesman, Joji Morishita, later said it had decided to focus on Australia because the meeting was being held here.
Japan is also mounting a sustained public relations campaign around the country for the Adelaide meeting.
Both Mr Morishita and Senator Hill were careful to characterise the conflict as a dispute between friends, saying it would not spill over into the general bilateral relationship.
But Senator Hill took a much more cautious line as he opened the meeting, making no direct reference to Japan while he sought to encourage last-minute waverers to join the sanctuary proposal.
Jointly presented by Australia and New Zealand and openly backed by at least six other nations, the vast sanctuary would stretch from Australia east beyond Pitcairn Island and north to the equator.
The main obstacle to achieving the necessary three-quarters majority remains a split between conservation nations about the best way for the IWC to protect whales.
A core group of 'pragmatic' conservation nations have indicated they will abstain from the vote. That made the task even more difficult, Senator Hill said.
Yesterday he raised the prospect that, like the Southern Ocean Sanctuary of the early 1990s, the South Pacific plan could take another two votes before it finally succeeded.
Mr Morishita was more cautious about the likely outcome, saying Japan could not tell what the result would be. If it failed, he said he hoped it would not be raised again.
Senator Hill also acknowledged that simply by objecting to the sanctuary, Japan would not be bound by the decision under IWC rules.
'We haven't been able to get Japan to acknowledge that they have no future intention of whaling in the South Pacific,' Senator Hill said. 'I guess the lodging of an objection by Japan would tend to increase that concern.'
Inside the meeting, Japan was heavily criticised over the inhumane killing of dolphins and porpoises in an annual slaughter of about 20,000 animals by its coastal fishermen.
Most are killed by hand-held harpoons, but some die in a 'drive hunt' in which they are herded into a net, hauled from the water alive and killed in a slaughterhouse.
Britain's Fisheries Minister Elliot Morley said most of these small cetaceans were exposed to unacceptable levels of cruelty. Japan refuses to recognise the IWC's competence to deal with small cetaceans.
Japan failed in an attempt to have Greenpeace excluded from the meeting over what it said were 'violent and illegal actions' when the campaign ship Arctic Sunrise and the Japanese factory ship Nisshin Maru collided in the Antarctic last summer. Each blames the other for the incident.
Copyright © The Age Company Ltd 2000
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