Rob Taylor, Reuters 19 Dec 07;
CANBERRA (Reuters) - Australia will send a fisheries patrol ship to shadow Japan's whaling fleet near Antarctica and gather evidence for a possible international court challenge to halt the yearly slaughter, the government said on Wednesday.
The icebreaker Oceanic Viking, used for customs and fisheries policing, would leave for the Southern Ocean in days to follow the Japanese fleet, Foreign Minister Stephen Smith and Environment Minister Peter Garrett told journalists.
But to avoid a high-seas incident and ease concern in Tokyo, heavy machine guns on the ship and sidearms used by boarding crews would be locked in storage below decks, they said.
Separately, Greenpeace sent a ship on Wednesday to try and stop the Japanese fleet hunting whales.
Japan's whaling fleet plans to hunt 935 minke whales, 50 fin whales and, for the first time in 40 years, 50 humpback whales for research over the Antarctic summer.
Humpbacks were hunted to near extinction until the International Whaling Commission ordered their protection in 1966.
Patrols by a low-flying A319 Airbus jet used by Australian Antarctic scientists would also follow and photograph the Japanese fleet, Foreign Minister Smith said.
"We are dealing here with the slaughter of whales, not scientific research. That's our starting point and our end point," Smith, whose centre-left Labor government won elections last month, partly on a promise of tougher anti-whaling action.
Japan has long resisted pressure to stop scientific whaling, insisting whaling is a cherished cultural tradition. Its fleet has killed 7,000 Antarctic minkes over the last 20 years.
"Japan's whaling is being conducted in line with international treaties and for the purpose of scientific research. We would like to win the understanding of others," a Japanese Foreign Ministry spokesman said in Tokyo.
Smith said photographic and video evidence gathered by the ship and aircraft would be used before any international legal tribunals to "make the point that what we are seeing is not scientific research, but the slaughter of whales."
"If you read Australian lips, you'll say that slaughtering whales is not scientific. It's cruel, it's barbaric and it's unnecessary," Garrett added.
DIPLOMATIC PROTEST
An Australian special envoy would formally convey opposition to the hunt to Tokyo and a separate diplomatic protest by anti-whaling nations was being prepared, Smith said.
The government was also getting legal advice for a case against Japan in international courts including the International Court of Justice in The Hague and the International Tribunal for the Law of the Sea.
"All options are on the table, including utilizing the whaling convention, utilizing the endangered species convention," he said, pointing to the 1973 CITES treaty, drawn up to protect threatened species.
Australian international law specialist Don Rothwell warned earlier this year that armed patrols would breach the 1959 Antarctic Treaty, which deemed Antarctica to be a demilitarized zone, and possibly spark an international incident.
Smith said he did not expect a diplomatic backlash from Tokyo, a major trading partner and security ally, but to ease concerns the patrol ship's crew would keep the weapons below deck during the surveillance, expected to last up to 20 days.
Greenpeace, whose protest vessel left New Zealand on Wednesday to chase the Japanese fleet, said Australia was taking strong action which would encourage other nations to join the campaign against whaling.
"We're going to try to stop it. We'll put our inflatables between the whales and the harpoon," Greenpeace Australia Chief Executive Steve Shallhorn told Reuters.
Australia warns deaths possible if Japan whalers, protesters clash
Yahoo News 19 Dec 07;
Australia urged Wednesday Japanese whalers and environmental activists heading for a showdown in the Southern Ocean to show restraint, warning deaths could occur if anything went wrong.
Announcing that Australia would deploy an unarmed customs ship and a surveillance aircraft to monitor the Japanese hunt, Foreign Minister Stephen Smith said whaling and protest ships needed to exercise caution.
"We are dealing here with an area of water that is thousands of miles away from mainland Australia, if there is an adverse incident on those seas, the capacity for rescue is very low," Smith told reporters.
"The capacity for adverse injury or fatality is very high."
Greenpeace and the militant environmental group Sea Shepherd have each sent a ship to Antarctic waters to try to disrupt Japan's plan to kill more than 1,000 whales, including humpbacks.
Greenpeace has vowed to stage a non-violent campaign but the Sea Shepherd's Paul Watson has threatened in the past to ram his ship, recently renamed the "Steve Irwin", into Japanese whalers.
Smith said the Australian customs vessel "Oceanic Viking" would set off for the killing grounds in the next few days from the Western Australian port of Fremantle.
He said the ship and an A319 jet operated by the Australian Antarctic Division would monitor the whaling fleet's activities to collect evidence for a possible legal challenge to the cull in international courts.
The 105-metre (346-foot) "Oceanic Viking", which has a reinforced hull to cut through ice, is normally fitted with two deck-mounted 0.50 calibre machine guns.
But Smith said the machine guns, as well as the firearms normally carried by the customs boarding crew operating from the vessel, would all be removed and stored below decks while it was monitoring the Japanese whalers.
"It will be surveillance, not enforcement, or intervention," Smith said, adding that customs officials would not attempt to board the whaling ships.
Smith said Australia would lead a formal diplomatic protest to Tokyo over the whaling, which Japan says is carried out for scientific reasons, even though it admits most of the whale meat ends up on dinner plates.
(Editing by Sanjeev Miglani
