Japanese PM calls for calm on whaling
Japanese Prime Minister Yasuo Fukuda on Friday urged calm in a bitter
dispute on whaling with Australia, which voiced disappointment as
whalers resumed their controversial Antarctic hunt.
The diplomatic row came as hunt supporters and opponents held a rare
meeting in Tokyo in a bid to ease the growing tension and break a logjam
in the international body handling whales.
Fukuda discussed the row during a meeting with Australian Foreign
Minister Stephen Smith, who is in Japan as part of his first foreign
trip since his centre-left government took power in December.
“The whaling issue is a matter of each country’s circumstances,”
Fukuda told reporters after the meeting. “It should not negatively
influence diplomatic relations,” he said. “It’s important to address the
whaling issue in a calm manner.”
Japan aims to slaughter about 1,000 whales this year in Antarctic
waters despite strong opposition from Western countries led by Australia
and environmental groups who revere the giant mammals.
Tokyo argues that whaling is part of its culture and accuses Western
nations of cultural insensitivity. It uses a loophole in a 1986 global
whaling moratorium that allows lethal research. Australian Prime
Minister Kevin Rudd’s government has taken a tough approach on the issue
and sent a customs ship to track the Japanese fleet.
The ship took footage of the Japanese killing five whales, resuming
the hunt some two weeks after it was halted by protesters, according to
Australian media reports.
Activists from the Sea Shepherd Conservation Society in mid-January
climbed aboard the Japanese harpoon ship to deliver a protest, setting
off a two-day standoff.
Sea Shepherd and the more mainstream environmental movement
Greenpeace ended their pursuit of the whalers in the past week after
running low on fuel.
Japan’s Fisheries Agency said it would not disclose the actions of
its fleet out of security concerns.
The bitterness of the dispute has turned the annual meetings of the
International Whaling Commission (IWC) into intense confrontations, with
Japan repeatedly threatening to walk out.
In a bid to break the deadlock, the Pew Charitable Trusts, a US-based
non-governmental group, arranged two days of closed-door talks this week
in Tokyo involving nearly 100 people from both sides of the issue.
“We concluded that an internationally accepted solution is
preferable, although we all question whether a political will exists,”
said the symposium’s chairman, Tuiloma Neroni Slade, a former judge on
the International Criminal Court and Samoan ambassador to the United
Nations.
Saying he was offering his personal view, Slade recommended a
compromise under which Western nations acknowledge Japanese coastal
communities’ right to whaling but Tokyo suspends “research whaling” in
the Southern Ocean.
Joji Morishita, the director for international negotiations at
Japan’s Fisheries Agency, was tightlipped on any compromise.
Tokyo, Friday, AFP |