Australia will not use trade sanctions to pressure Japan to abandon its plan to kill more whales in Antarctica. It will also not use force to keep Japanese whaling ships out the region, Prime Minister John Howard said on Tuesday.
Japan has announced it will lobby members of the International Whaling Commission (IWC) at a meeting in South Korea next month to have its annual catch of minke whales raised from the current 440.
It also proposes to take 20 humpback whales a year initially, and then possibly hundreds.
Howard told Parliament that Japan is unlikely to yield on the issue, and sabre-rattling over the Antarctic or attempts to take Japan to the International Court will not change things.
”On our advice, the sort of action sought would not be supported by international law,” he said.
Howard has written to his counterpart, Junichiro Koizumi, to urge a change of heart on the hunting of species Australia considers endangered.
The Labour Party’s Anthony Albanese, opposition environment spokesperson in Parliament, chided the government for allowing Japan to use chequebook diplomacy to stack the IWC in its favour.
He said the IWC’s South Pacific and Caribbean members vote with Japan in return for aid money.
”The Howard government has sat on its hands over the past three years while Japan has increased its influence over IWC members. The Howard government has been completely negligent in this matter,” Albanese said.
Greens leader Bob Brown said Howard’s letter to Koizumi was an empty gesture.
”It’s time the prime minister moved from the diplomatic niceties to a little bit of tough talk,” Brown said.
Japan was party to a 1986 IWC moratorium on commercial whaling.
It resumed catches in 1987 using the pretext of ”scientific whaling”. — Sapa-DPA