6/23/2010 Whaling Commission Meeting Opens in …

Whaling Commission Meeting Opens in a

Swirl of Corruption Claims

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AGADIR, Morocco, June 21, 2010 (ENS) - The

worldwide moratorium on commercial whaling that has
been in place since 1986 could be overturned this week as
the 88 member governments of the International Whaling
Commission hold their annual meeting in Agadir amidst
accusations of corruption and vote buying.

The IWC is expected to vote on a proposal by the

Commission's chairman and vice-chairman that would
allow a resumption of commercial whaling in exchange for
pledges by three whaling nations - Japan, Norway and
Iceland - to reduce the numbers of whales they kill each
year.

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nations permission to take almost 13,000 whales over the
next 10 years, including several threatened species.
The proposal would allow hunting in the Southern Ocean
Sanctuary around Antarctica and approve the killing of
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It would add new rights for Japan to hunt whales in its

coastal waters and allow continuing whaling by Iceland and

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6/23/2010 Whaling Commission Meeting Opens in …
Norway, but no other nations would be permitted to begin
whaling.
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The meeting opened this morning behind closed doors

without the leadership of IWC Chairman Ambassador
Cristian Maquieira of Chile, who has pulled out of the
meeting in Morocco due to ill health. The nature of his
illness was not specified by the IWC.

The meeting is being led by IWC vice-chairman Anthony

Liverpool of Antigua and Barbuda, who co-wrote the
proposal with Maquieira.

But Liverpool's authority as acting chair and the entire

IWC process have been compromised by accusations of
corruption which appeared in the "Sunday Times of
London" yesterday and June 13.

According to the reports, Liverpool and the IWC

commissioners of 15 other member countries had their
flights, accommodations, per diem, and other meeting
expenses paid by representatives of the government of
Japan, a conflict of interest that undermines their ability to
be fair to both sides.

The IWC convention states that, "The expenses of each

member of the commission and of his experts and advisers
shall be determined and paid by his own government."

But a Sunday Times reporter posing as a British lobbyist

willing to pay IWC member governments to vote against
the proposal recorded admissions that those governments
feared to lose aid payments from Japan if they did so. Cash
and the services of prostitutes were also used to gain their
support for Japan on IWC votes, the undercover reporters
learned.

Such vote buying has long been alleged, but Japanese

government representatives have denied employing the
practice.

The June 13 report prompted a call by a whistleblower to

the Greenpeace office in Tokyo to tell the campaign group
about his role in Japan's vote buying operation.

A minke whale on the deck of a Japanese "research" whaling

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6/23/2010 Whaling Commission Meeting Opens in …
vessel (Photo courtesy Institute of Cetacean Research)

The whistleblower revealed that Liverpool's bill at the Atlas

Amadil Beach hotel in Agadir from June 13 to 28 was
being paid by Japan Tours and Travel, a firm based in
Houston, Texas and linked by a Sunday Times reporter to
a Japanese businessman named Hideuki "Harry" Wakasa,
who also lives in Houston.

The whistleblower last week identified Wakasa as the

middleman who paid cash and checks to five east
Caribbean island nations, including Antigua.

Junichi Sato, program director of Greenpeace Japan, said

today, "Whistleblowers have come forward to confirm
what we have known for years - that Japan actively
engages in vote-buying at the IWC."

"Scandals surrounding Japan's whaling industry continue to

emerge," Sato said. "Two years ago, I exposed the
embezzlement of expensive cuts of meat, smuggled off
Japanese whaling ships and sold on the black market. I
was arrested, prosecuted and now face up to 18 months in
prison, all for revealing the true face of my government's
whaling program."

"I urge the negotiators meeting here in Agadir to take

political risks, for which they will not be jailed, to improve
the current proposal, end the decades of IWC deadlock
and bring it into the 21st century," said Sato. "The meeting
in Agadir can and must save whales, not whaling industries
reliant on bribery and embezzlement for survival."

Patrick Ramage, Global Whale Programme director with

the International Fund for Animal Welfare said, "Of the
countries paying their own way here, the vast majority
favor permanent protection for whales. However,
procedural manoeuvres are being used to prevent them
from presenting their views in an open session."

"The acting chair has ordered two further days of closed-

door meetings to limit time for open debate, with a view to
fast-tracking the proposal when the formal session re-
opens on Wednesday," said Ramage.

"Whatever one's view on the proposal," he said, "its

adoption under the present circumstances will destroy any
remaining credibility of the Whaling Commission."

Humpback whale in Neko Harbor, Antarctica (Photo by Justine

Carson)

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Wendy Elliott, species manager at WWF International,

called the decision to exclude the civil society and media is
"a scandal."

"The unprecedented decision to start discussions at this

year's IWC behind closed doors is fundamentally
unacceptable," Elliott said. "The issues discussed at the
IWC are of enormous public interest. We already had two
years of closed doors negotiations leading up to this point,
and now is the moment to open up a transparent and
honest discussion."

Captain Paul Watson, founder and president of the Sea

Shepherd Conservation Society, which for the past five
years has sent ships to the Southern Ocean to block
Japanese whaling, called the IWC, "Irrelevant, Wearisome,
and Corrupt."

"It has become increasingly clear that Japan has been

bullying, buying, and threatening nations to vote in favor of
ending the global moratorium on whaling," said Watson.
"The IWC no longer has any credibility, it is an irrelevant
organization. Many of the nations voting for Japan have
zero interest in the issue of whaling. They vote the way they
are paid to vote."

Watson says he will again send ships to the Southern

Ocean to intercept Japanese whalers during the next
whaling season.

But the government of Japan, in a briefing note issued in

advance of the IWC meeting in Agadir, again denied that it
buys the votes of IWC member governments. "This
accusation is false. Japan is one of the world's largest
donors, providing aid to over 150 countries. This aid is not
linked to the policies of recipient nations on specific issues.
In fact, Japanese aid is provided to a number of countries
including Argentina, Brazil, India and Mexico that are
opposed to whaling," Japan said through the Institute of
Cetacean Research.

"Accusations of vote buying are part of a campaign of

threats and intimidation by extremist NGOs against
Caribbean nations that have supported the principle of
sustainable use of all marine resources including whales,"
said the briefing note. "No one should be surprised that
nations dependant on the resources of the sea would vote
in a similar manner to Japan in the IWC."

Acting Chair Liverpool has long declared himself as a

supporter of whaling. As Antigua and Barbuda's IWC
commissioner at the 2005 meeting in South Korea, he
argued that some IWC members of lack respect for
cultural traditions and fail to accept the position of coastal
communities and small island states to utilize whales for
food.

"It is no secret that communities in countries like St.

Vincent and the Grenadines, Norway, Iceland, Greenland
and Japan have been hunting and eating whales for
generations," Liverpool said then. "This failure on the part
of some developing countries to support the proposal by
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Japan for small type coastal whaling is about 'big countries'
trying to direct, dictate and determine how people in
smaller countries should live."

However, support for whaling is

eroding in some IWC
governments, including IWC
Chairman Maquieira's own
government, Chile.

Two Chilean senators have

requested Maquieira resignation
because, they said, his
"unbalanced role is affecting the
international image of Chile by
supporting the resumption of
IWC Chairman Chilean
commercial whaling." Ambassador Cristian
Maquieira at an
"This position is totally against international meeting on
the Policy of State of Chile, oceans, 2009. (Photo courtesy
ENB)
openly committed to the
protection and non-lethal use of
whales," said Senators Guido Girardi of the Party for
Democracy and Juan Pablo Letelier of the Socialist Party.

They say Maquieira's position shows "a lack of

coordination" with that of Chile's Minister of Foreign
Affairs Alfredo Moreno, who recently stated that the
position of ambassador Maquieira does not represent the
official position of the Chilean government.

Some nations named in the Sunday Times as targets of

Japan's vote-buying bribes denied the accusations. On
Wednesday, the Pacific island nation of Kiribati "strongly"
denied the allegation.

The Marshall Islands foreign minister accused the

newspaper of "falsifying" and "distorting" information. The
Marshall Islands' vote at the International Whaling
Commission "is not for sale," Foreign Minister John Silk
said in a statement Wednesday.

The Marshalls Foreign Ministry acknowledged its "long-

standing diplomatic relationship with Japan," and confirmed
it "has received tremendous bilateral assistance from Japan
through grants, trainings, economic development projects,"
including a new $8 million fish market and a $4 million solar
energy project.

In the Pacific island nation of Palau President Johnson

Toribiong said earlier this month that he is "reconsidering"
his country's vote in favor of Japanese whaling. His
statement prompted Japan's ambassador to Palau to inform
Toribiong that a special envoy will be visiting Palau "to
educate me on the Japanese policies and scientific
research."

And on June 16, the German parliament declared that in

order for Iceland to be granted membership in the
European Union, it must abolish its whaling industry.

Monica Medina, the U.S. IWC Commissioner and the

Commerce Department's principal deputy under secretary
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for oceans and atmosphere, takes the position that the
proposal needs improvement.

U.S. IWC Commissioner Monica Medina and IWC Chairman

Cristian Maquieira brief reporters at the U.S. State Department,
May 27, 2010. (Photo courtesy U.S. State Dept.)

At a May 27 briefing at the U.S. State Department, held

jointly with Maquieira, she said, "We, the U.S., agree with
his assessment that the IWC is fundamentally broken and
must be fixed."

"The goal of the United States in this process has been, and
will continue to be, to conserve whales," said Medina. "The
administration recognizes that there are significant benefits
outlined in the proposal that has been put forward by the
chair and vice chair of the commission. And we will
continue to work with them on the proposal, but we don't
believe it's in a place where we can accept it yet."

Medina said the United States continues to support the

moratorium. "In fact, one of the key elements of the
proposal that makes it possible for us to even consider it is
that the moratorium would not be lifted or waived, changed
or amended."

Yet, she also said, "The essence of this agreement would

be recognizing that some whaling has been able to continue
in the face of a moratorium. And the idea would be to cap
that whaling and to get it under the IWC's control so that it
can be monitored."

Australian Environment Minister Peter Garrett said,

"Australia will not be voting for a bad deal for whales and I
will be prepared to work as long and as hard as necessary
to ensure that the moratorium on commercial whaling does
not end up in tatters on the Commission floor."

"A bad deal driven through the Commission on a split vote

is unlikely to achieve reform or a reconciliation between
IWC members," Garrett said. "We will be working closely
with conservation-minded countries, including countries
from Europe and Latin America, New Zealand, the United
States and others, to achieve an outcome that genuinely
improves protection for whales globally."

Japan's position is that, "the 1946 International Convention

for the Regulation of Whaling is about properly managing
the whaling industry, that is, regulating catch quotas at
levels so that whale stocks will not be threatened. The
Convention is not about protecting all whales irrespective

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of their abundance," the Institute of Cetacean Research
said in its briefing note.

"Japan's objective is to resume sustainable whaling for

abundant species under international control including
science-based harvest quota and effective enforcement
measures," the ICR said. "At the same time we are
committed to conservation and the protection of
endangered species. This is the purpose of the International
Convention for the Regulation of Whaling."

Click here for previous ENS coverage of the 2010

International Whaling Commission meeting.

Copyright Environment News Service (ENS) 2010. All rights

reserved.

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