Japan plays it cool on whaling dispute

By F.J. Khergamvala

TOKYO, SEPT. 15. The Government of Mr. Yoshiro Mori has decided to adopt the legal, not cultural position to fend off U.S. allegations and a symbolic punitive measure on Japan's whaling policy.

Reacting to the U.S. decision on preventing Japanese vessels from operating within the U.S.' 320 km Exclusive Economic Zone, (EEZ) the country's Agriculture, Forestry and Fisheries Minister, Mr. Yoichi Yani lashed out at the U.S.' propensity to give priority to domestic law at the expense of international law as defined in a treaty. ``Why is this being judged under U.S. domestic laws when an international treaty permits research whaling?''

Expressing verbal outrage is as far as Japan will go for the moment. In any case the measures announced by the U.S. seem less designed to punish Japan than to bolster the Democratic Presidential candidate, Mr. Al Gore's credentials among environmental groups. The White House announced on Thursday that it had banned Japanese vessels from exploiting resources in America's EEZ. The Commerce Department also recommended to the White House that the U.S. impose a ban on all Japanese marine products into the U.S.

For the past two years, the U.S. and Japan have worked assiduously at upholding an unwritten agreement to prevent trade disputes from becoming political. Successive governments in Japan have been particularly careful to ensure that trade or economic issues do not become an election issue in the U.S. Therefore, the Mori Government is certainly not about to overreact to the purely politically motivated action of an outgoing administration in the U.S. There is indeed no reason to react immediately, especially on U.S. farm exports to Japan, worth $9.5 billion annually. On the first measure of not permitting Japan to operate in the U.S. EEZ, Japan has not fished in troubled waters since 1988. In fact, the U.S. has not permitted foreign vessels to make catches since 12 years, but it is considering relaxing that rule for mackerel and herring from next year. At that time Japan will be affected by the ban.

As for the Commerce Department's recommendation to ban the import of Japanese marine products, the White House has 60 days to decide. That deadline runs past the U.S. Presidential election. It is highly unlikely that the U.S. will keep any sanctions in place without risking Japanese complaints to the dispute resolution mechanism of the World Trade Organisation. Annually, Japan exports marine products worth nearly about $333 million. Tokyo is mainly concerned about its scallop exports to the U.S. being affected. The U.S. could also ban third countries from exporting catch made in U.S. waters.

Washington DC, which boycotted a whaling conference in Japan a few weeks back, could also lead a move to shift the International Whaling Commission's meeting in next March, scheduled in Japan, to another location. Japanese fishing officials and lobbies are also concerned that any prohibitive measures by the U.S. could be extended to cover areas like the waters off the territory of Guam where the catch is rich. For now therefore, the Japanese position is to allow individual legislators to express their anger at the U.S.' action but the decision to play down the controversy and to give it a legal twist also masks what almost every environmental group calls as Japan's utterly immoral conduct.

This dispute has the potential to flare up after the U.S. election because the Mori Government too could rouse nationalist sentiment against the unlateralism quite typical of the U.S. This is the first major open dispute since both allies went head to head on the car wars in the mid-1990s.

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Section  : International
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