WASHINGTON — Three years of talks aimed at reducing whaling activity by Japan, Norway and Iceland broke down Wednesday, leaving management of the population of the world’s largest animals essentially in the hands of whale hunters.
Anthony Liverpool, the acting chairman of the International Whaling Commission, told delegates meeting in Agadir, Morocco, that “fundamental positions remained very much apart,” The Associated Press reported.
The goal of the Morocco meeting was to forge a 10-year compromise that would create a legal framework to allow limited whale hunting by Japan, Norway and Iceland. Currently, all types of whale hunting are banned by the commission, but those three nations consistently ignore the bans and have caught thousands of the mammals since the 1980s under loopholes in the law.
Delegates of the commission’s 88 member governments were trying to work out a plan proposed by the United States and other anti-whaling nations to let the three countries conduct whaling expeditions, but under tight international control and at significantly lower numbers.
The talks reportedly failed over the issue of how many whales Japan could kill in the waters off Antarctica, where Japanese whalers hunt hundreds of whales each year. The compromise plan also called for a gradual phase-out of the Japanese hunt in the South Ocean Whale Sanctuary, and Japanese officials balked at that step.
The Japanese government says that its whaling activity is for scientific purposes, but critics say the Japanese hunts are in reality commercial.
Jemma Jones, a spokeswoman for the commission, declined to comment.
The talks became even more contentious after The Sunday Times of London reported that Japan had been offering aid to fisheries in poor nations in an effort to gain those countries’ votes. The newspaper conducted a sting operation in which hidden cameras caught officials discussing the price of their support.
Both the Japanese government and officials from other nations who were named in the stories denied accusations of bribery.
