Revealed: Japan's whaling 'shopping list'

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http://news.independent.co.uk/world/asia/article1096046.ece

 

Revealed: Japan's whaling 'shopping list'

By David McNeill in St Kitts

Published: 24 June 2006

 

Less than a week since Japan and its allies scored a

stunning victory at the International Whaling

Commission (IWC) conference - paving the way for a

possible return to commercial whaling - the Japanese

government has inadvertently revealed how it was done:

by buying the votes it needed.

 

In a written reply to a query on Japan's " marine-aid "

to developing countries, the government has

acknowledged donating 617 million yen (£2.9m) last

year to St Kitts and Nevis, the Caribbean nation that

hosted the IWC conference. Japan also gave £5.6m to

Nicaragua, while the Pacific island cluster of Palau

got £2.7m.

 

All three countries voted with Japan, Iceland and

Norway at last weekend's conference in favour of the

" St Kitts and Nevis Declaration " , calling for the

20-year ban on commercial whaling to be eventually

scrapped. The pro-whaling camp won the ballot by just

one vote. Conservationists said the result, while

largely symbolic, could spell disaster for the world's

whale stocks.

 

Japan has long been accused of using aid packages to

swing the 70-member IWC back into the pro-whaling

camp. Many of the commission's 20 newest members, such

as the Marshall Islands and St Kitts and Nevis, have

no history of whaling and several, including Mongolia

and Mali, have no coastlines.

 

Conservationists also say Japan has been known to pay

the IWC subscriptions of poorer members such as Togo,

which turned up late to the conference with its

$10,000 membership fee in cash, although such

allegations have never been proved.

 

But the latest information is the most detailed yet on

Japan's grants to its supporters and will lead to

calls for further investigation into the ties between

foreign aid and pro-whaling votes.

 

Japan's IWC negotiator, Joji Morishita, denied that

his country bought its way to victory. " Japan gives

aid to over 100 countries so why single out those that

come to this conference? " he asked, claiming that the

charges were an attempt by the " anti-whaling bloc " to

smear countries that want to return " to sustainable

use of whale resources " .

 

An anonymous foreign ministry official, speaking to

the Yomiuri newspaper this week, called allegations of

vote-buying " Japan-bashing " . But Greenpeace Japan's

executive director, Jun Hoshikawa, said it was

" obvious " that Japan's aid had influenced the St Kitts

vote: " Otherwise why is money being poured into the

country? Tax money is being spent on something

Japanese people do not want on a place they don't

know. "

 

Environmentalists in Japan say the drive to end the

1986 ban is backed by a group of nationalist

politicians who have invested more than £54.9m in

public money since 2000 on six Caribbean nations,

despite indifference at home to whaling. An internet

survey released last week claimed that more than 70

per cent of Japanese people oppose a return to

commercial whaling. Whale eating has been declining in

Japan since the 1960s and is eaten regularly by less

than 1 per cent of the population.

 

The government's campaign has flown largely beneath

the Japanese media's radar. The conference, for

instance, to which Japan sent 59 delegates - nearly

five times as many as the UK - received scant coverage

until the vote was announced. Conservative newspapers

have since hailed the result as a victory for Japanese

negotiators.

 

The aid question was tabled by Shokichi Kina, a member

of the opposition Democratic Party. " Japanese people

don't even eat whales or dolphins any more but still

the government is pressing ahead, " he said. " It's

ridiculous to hear the fisheries ministry say stocks

are increasing when nobody really knows if that's

true. "

 

The government said it had also awarded millions of

yen in " grant aid " to Peru, which supports commercial

whaling, and Samoa and Algeria, which

environmentalists believe Japan is trying to recruit.

The St Kitts grant was signed on 1 July 2005, just

after the IWC conference in South Korea. The

government did not deny the " vote-buying " charge in

its reply to Mr Kina.

 

Japan and Iceland engage in " scientific whaling " ,

while Norway ignores the moratorium. Pro-whalers need

75 per cent of the IWC votes to scrap the ban. Many

fear they will use the momentum from what Mr Morishita

called the " historic " weekend vote to dominate next

year's IWC conference in Alaska.