Battle looms over whaling ban

Minke whale killed by a Norwegian whalers

World governments are coming under renewed pressure to lift an international ban on whaling.

Japan, Norway and Iceland will this week urge members of the International Whaling Commission (IWC) to end a moratorium on the killing of whales.

But the UK, Australia and America support the international ban on commercial whaling, which has been in force since 1986.

We think whales should be seen and not hurt

Inaoko Funahashi, spokesman, IFAW, Japan

Environmental groups have even accused Japan of bribing poorer countries to vote with them.

They claim several Caribbean nations have accepted financial aid in return for supporting Japan at Commission meetings.

Animal rights groups are to hold a protest outside the London venue of the week-long meeting, fearing the ban could be overturned.

Killing continues

The moratorium's supporters are essentially fighting a rearguard action to keep it intact. In the 15 years since the prohibition came into force, thousands of whales have been killed.

IWC rules allow unlimited catches of any species in the name of scientific research, and Japan has been hunting the relatively abundant minke whales in the Antarctic for some years.

A Japanese delegate to the talks was criticised by conservationists after he described minke whales as "cockroaches of the seas", adding that "there are too many of them".

Japan has recently extended the hunt to take small numbers of minkes, sperm and Bryde's whales, which are much less numerous, in the north Pacific.

The environmental pressure group Greenpeace says Japan has secured support for lifting the ban by bribing a number of countries, including six east Caribbean states, the Solomon Islands and Guinea.

Saving the whale

IWC - established in 1946, now has 46 members

Britain ceased whaling in 1963

Minke whales number 750,000 in Antarctica alone

Whale-watching is a £710m industry worldwide

Norway is not bound by the moratorium because it objected to it in the first place.

It kills around 500 minkes in the north Atlantic every year. There is also some limited whaling by local communities in the Arctic and the Caribbean, again permitted by the IWC.

And Iceland, which left the Commission in 1993, has this year rejoined it. It says it will resume whaling, possibly as early as next year.

Tourist trade

In a report released to coincide with the meeting, the International Fund for Animal Welfare (IFAW) says Japan, Norway and Iceland have all generated sizeable incomes from a growing whale-watching industry.

The study claims the activity is now worth £710m worldwide.

Japans' IFAW spokesman Inaoko Funahashi said: "No doubt whale-watchers in Japan, Norway and Iceland are wondering why their governments want to kill this precious resource. We think whales should be seen and not hurt."

Conservationists argue that whales are intelligent creatures

The IWC was set up more than 50 years ago, charged with conserving both whales and whaling. Twenty years ago, a clear majority of members favoured a purely conservationist role for the commission.

They argued that the depredations of the commercial whaling years meant the world's severely depleted populations should be left in peace, in the hope that they might recover.

Some appear to have begun to do so: the minkes and the gray whales are doing comparatively well.

But there is hardly any sign of growth in the numbers of blue whales, the largest creatures ever to have lived on Earth.

Estimated at more than 250,000 in their prime, the blue whales are now thought to number perhaps as few as 5,000.