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A last gasp effort to save the whaling ban?

John Vidal

A naturalist and a U.K. Conservative Party leader make unlikely allies amid British moves to tip balance against Japan.

AN UNLIKELY grouping of the British Government, naturalist Sir David Attenborough, and Lord Ashcroft, the U.K. Conservative Party leader, has emerged to try to stop Japan and its allies from overturning the international ban on whaling.

British Ministers have signed up Croatia, Slovenia, Cyprus, and Greece to join an anti-whaling coalition at the International Whaling Commission's annual conference, which began on Monday in Anchorage, Alaska. Two more anti-whaling nations, Costa Rica and Peru, have also been persuaded by Britain to pay their membership dues to allow them to vote. The initiative potentially tips the balance against Japanese diplomacy aimed at lifting the 25-year-old moratorium on commercial whaling.

Japan is seeking to reverse resolutions to protect whales, to weaken conservation measures, and to encourage the trade in whale products. To the horror of more than 150 international anti-whaling groups, pro-whaling countries led by Japan gained a simple majority of votes at the IWC meeting last year, but not the 75 per cent required to guarantee a return to commercial whaling. Britain and its allies are now making a concerted attempt to reverse even last year's simple majority.

Japan has been accused of using multi-million dollar fishing aid packages to swing the IWC. Last year it admitted paying 617 million yen ($5 million) to St Kitts & Nevis, the small Caribbean country that hosted the 2006 IWC conference. Nicaragua was awarded nearly $17 million, and Palau, a Pacific island state, was given $8.1 million. All three countries, which were not members of the IWC before, voted with Japan at the conference. The pro-whalers won by one vote.

Britain's efforts to win the voting maths are being helped by Lord Ashcroft, a major donor to and treasurer of the Conservative party from 1998 to 2001, who has commissioned a television advertising campaign voiced by the newsreader Sir Trevor McDonald, which he hopes will persuade six small Caribbean countries to switch sides and oppose Japan at the meeting.

Environment Minister Ben Bradshaw said: "We hope our diplomacy will be enough but we won't actually know until the meeting starts. Whaling politics is like poker. You do not know exactly who will turn up at the IWC meetings. Countries can always shuffle in at the last minute."

The Japanese Government, which intends to kill 50 endangered humpback whales and nearly 1,000 others for "scientific" purposes in the Antarctic whale sanctuary this year, is expected to respond to Britain's diplomatic push by trying to persuade other countries to join the IWC. It is targeting Algeria and Tanzania.

On Sunday, the British Government repeated allegations that Japan bribed small countries with aid money. "You only have to go round the Caribbean to see all these fisheries plants [paid for by the Japanese aid programme]. They are all mothballed. They are clearly linked to whaling votes," said Mr. Bradshaw.

Tokyo's denial

Japan strongly denied using aid money to influence whaling votes, arguing that it was one of the largest aid givers in the world and supported these countries for other reasons. However, critics point out that many of the commission's newest members have no history of whaling and several, including Mongolia and Mali, have no coastlines. It has been estimated that Japan has given more than $750 million in fisheries aid to what are now pro-whaling countries in the last 12 years.

Lord Ashcroft, who has business links with Belize, a whaling country in central America, is trying to win over Antigua, Dominica, Grenada, St Kitts, St Lucia, and St Vincent. Last year they received nearly $300 million from Japan, much of it in the form of fisheries aid.

Earlier this year, Japan invited all 72 IWC members to Tokyo to prepare the organisation for a return to commercial whaling and trade. It is believed that it paid for most of its 21 small-country allies to attend. Some 26 anti-whaling countries, including the U.K., New Zealand, Australia, the U.S., and Argentina, boycotted the meeting, which was not sanctioned by the IWC.— © Guardian Newspapers Limited 2007

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