NZ renews whale haven bid ahead of Koizumi visit
Date: 01-May-02
Country: NEW ZEALAND
Author: Graeme Peters
Japanese Prime Minister Junichiro Koizumi arrives in Wellington on Thursday for talks that will include whaling, seen as a marked point of difference in an otherwise warm relationship between the two Pacific Rim nations.
A New Zealand government minister yesterday released the joint NZ-Australia submission on the agenda for an international whaling meeting next month in Japan, which opposes the sanctuary and instead wants to resume commercial whaling.
It's the fourth attempt to establish the world's third whale sanctuary in the region. The submission also says the South Pacific's whale population remains seriously depleted.
"The proposed sanctuary would protect these populations and allow their recovery," the submission said.
Whale numbers in the southern hemisphere were decimated by commercial whaling in the last two centuries, with an estimated 1.5 million whales killed in the last century alone, the submission says.
Rampant whaling left southern right whales virtually extinct by 1850, and whalers also severely affected blue whales and the larger population of sperm whales.
TUG OF WAR
Neither the whale conservation nor whale-hunting factions is expected gain the necessary three-quarter majority at the 54th annual meeting of the International Whaling Commission (IWC) starting May 20.
New Zealand Prime Minister Helen Clark, a long-time whaling opponent, said New Zealand and Japan had well-rehearsed differences over whaling and she did not expect any major breakthroughs during her one-hour meeting with Koizumi.
"We will run our arguments again. I don't expect instant conversion on that," Clark told reporters.
New Zealand's IWC commissioner Jim McClay said the latest bid had been refined since last year's submission, criticised by Japan for a lack of proven support from countries within the proposed sanctuary.
"It draws attention to the very substantial support that the proposal now has from the Pacific Island countries that are not members of the IWC," McClay told Reuters.
A forum of Pacific Island leaders last October backed the sanctuary, and some are establishing whaling-free areas within their 200-mile economic zones.
Japan abandoned commercial whaling in 1986 after an IWC moratorium, but since then has taken several hundred whales a year of various species in what it calls scientific whaling.