Plans to resume whaling opposed
Foreign Minister Murray McCully has called on South Korea to think again before it moves to resume whaling.
South Korea said yesterday it would start whaling using a global moratorium that allows scientific research, a tactic used by Japan.
Mr McCully said from Panama the move would undermine the International Whaling Commission (IWC), which is meeting in the Central American country.
‘‘In this day and age, there is simply no need to kill whales in order to conduct effective research.’’
He said New Zealand’s ambassador in Seoul would raise ‘‘our serious concerns’’ with the South Korean Government.
In another blow, four of New Zealand’s closest Pacific allies voted with Japan to end a South American bid to create a sanctuary for whales in the southern Atlantic Ocean.
Two other Pacific states that could have supported New Zealand failed to show up at the IWC meeting in Panama.
Argentina, Brazil, South Africa and Uruguay put forward the proposal to declare the southern Atlantic a no-kill zone for whales.
Thirty-eight countries voted in favour of the measure and 21 voted against, with two abstentions. Under the IWC rules, proposals need to enjoy a ‘‘consensus’’ of 75 per cent support for approval.
Mick Mcintyre, director of the Whales Alive lobby group in Australia, said it was regrettable that four Pacific states voted with Japan – Palau, Kiribati, Nauru and Tuvalu.
Australia and New Zealand voted in favour of the proposal.
The Solomon Islands and the Marshall Islands – whose IWC membership was paid for by Japan – failed to show up.
All the states are members of the 16-nation Pacific Forum, which in recent years has expressed strongly proenvironmental sentiments and has called for support over global warming and sea level rising.
Tuvalu, Kiribati and the Solomons, in particular, are heavily dependent on New Zealand and Australian aid.
Mr Mcintyre said he could not say that Japan had bought the Pacific vote.
‘‘No doubt the Japanese Fisheries Agency has been an important factor in their vote,’’ he said from Panama.
‘‘What’s more, our Pacific Islands brothers and sisters voting against it could have been the dif- ference in votes. It’s regrettable that they voted against the sanctuary.’’
The others that voted with Japan were Antigua and Barbuda, Benin, Cambodia, China, Ghana, Grenada, Iceland, South Korea, Laos, Mongolia, Norway, Russia, St Kitts and Nevis, St Lucia, Tanzania and Togo.
Morocco and St Vincent and the Grenadines abstained, and the Marshalls and the Solomons did not show up.
AFP said the vote had reignited international tensions over Japanese whaling.
Jose Truda Palazzo, who spearheaded the proposal for the Atlantic sanctuary when he was Brazil’s representative to the IWC, blamed nations that received Japanese aid for scuttling the proposal.
‘‘Japan doesn’t want to give an inch on anything that may compromise their ability to roam the world doing whaling as they see fit,’’ said Mr Truda Palazzo, who is now at Brazil’s non-governmental Cetacean Conservation Center.
‘‘You can’t really believe that Nauru or Tuvalu has an interest or has studied the sanctuary. They are voting because Japan tells them to.’’
Japan ignores the Southern Ocean whale sanctuary, and does ‘‘scientific’’ whaling south of Australia and New Zealand each year.