Amy Coopes Yahoo News 25 Feb 10;
SYDNEY (AFP) – Australia called Thursday for an end to so-called "scientific whaling" and the phaseout over five years of harpooning in the Southern Ocean, in a move apparently aimed squarely at Japan.
The demands, which follow an Australian threat to take legal action against Japan over its whaling activities, were outlined in a proposal sent to the International Whaling Commission, Environment Minister Peter Garrett said.
Garrett said the proposed end within a "reasonable period" to scientific hunting of the giant mammals, and a five-year timeline for the cessation of Antarctic whaling reflected Australia's strong conservation agenda and aimed to break the gridlock that had "beset talks for decades", Garrett said.
"While the government acknowledges the efforts made by participants in these discussions, the approach now under discussion in the Commission falls well short of any outcome that Australia could accept," he said.
"That is why we have now brought forward this new proposal to advance true conservation objectives, and specifically to bring about an end to commercial and so-called scientific whaling right around the world."
Garrett said Australia would advance the proposal at a meeting in Florida next week of the IWC's small working group, a process he stressed it remained committed to.
"However, if Australia's principled conservation objectives cannot be secured in the negotiations, Australia will initiate legal action against Japan in the International Court of Justice (ICJ) before the next Southern Ocean whaling season," Garrett said.
Under the Australian proposal, no new whaling would be permitted on species or populations not currently hunted, hunting for vulnerable species would immediately end and no harpooning would be permitted in sanctuaries.
Tensions flared last week when Prime Minister Kevin Rudd bluntly warned Japan it had until November to reduce its whale catch to zero, or face action in the ICJ.
On a visit to Australia at the weekend, Japanese Foreign Minister Katsuya Okada described the ultimatum as "unfortunate", but said his country would meet any challenge head-on and seek to prove its activities were legal.
Australia, along with New Zealand, has consistently opposed Japan's killing of hundreds of whales each year, which it carries out via a loophole in an international moratorium that allows "lethal research".
The proposal document says Australia "needs to see an immediate end to unilateral so-called 'scientific' whaling," and it would continue to argue "vigorously that whaling should be phased down to zero".
There should be "total and permanent elimination of all whaling other than current aboriginal subsistence whaling within a reasonable timeframe," it added.
The bold proposal also called for reform to the governance of the IWC to "uphold the central role of science" and argued for an "agreed mechanism and a strategy to ensure a robust and properly funded monitoring, compliance and enforcement framework for whaling during the phase-out period."
Both Japan and Australia have expressed hope for a diplomatic solution to their impasse over whaling, but Canberra has stepped up its rhetoric in recent weeks in a seeming hardening of its stance.
