Japan had been pushing hard for backing from some of the 166 signatories of the Convention on International Trade in Endangered Species (CITES) for its plan to ease the total trade ban on some minke whale populations.

In some of the most heated debate at the Bangkok-hosted 13th CITES summit, Japan urged parties not to submit to the "cultural imperialism" of western governments, many of which opposed the proposal.

Japan, insisted minke whale stocks had recovered sufficiently to be transferred from the most-protective CITES appendix I to appendix II, which allows regulated commercial trade in a species.

There are more than one million minke whales worldwide, according to CITES.

But support for the proposal fell well short, with a majority of members voting down the proposal.

Conservationists had vowed to block the plan, which they said was a concerted push to encourage an end to the 18-year commercial whale hunting ban after previous attempts at CITES meetings.

The current moratorium was imposed by the International Whaling Commission (IWC) in 1986.

Japan is to hunt some 820 whales next year under its "research" whaling program, allowed through a loophole in the current ban, and had had hoped a CITES vote in its favour would bolster its case to revive the industry.

Its delegation vowed "never" to give up the campaign, which it said affected a Japanese whaling tradition going back thousands of years. But environmental groups said any change to CITES rules would undermine the IWC.

"Major uncertainty remains over population trends of the minke whale, and permitting trade in whale meat through CITES would have been a challenge to the authority of the IWC," said World Wildlife Fund delegation leader Susan Lieberman.

"We are tired of the Japanese trying to re-establish whaling through the back door."

The International Fund for Animal Welfare (IFAW) also charged that Japanese whaling was already providing cover for protected species to be sold on the market.

"Recent DNA analyses conducted on whale products from Japanese retail shops found a variety of species including some endangered species," Naoko Funahashi, IFAW's representative in Japan said in a statement after the ruling.

"Japan has known of this problem for 10 years but has done little to stop it," said Funahashi.

Backing the Japanese push were fellow whaling states Norway and Iceland, as well as some Caribbean nations and Cambodia.

Norway has contravened the IWC moratorium since 1993 and continues commercial hunting of some 650 minke whales from the North Atlantic each year, according to whaling groups.

The CITES meeting, which started on October 2 and ends Thursday, has already backed a trade ban for the threatened Irrawaddy dolphin, highly prized by Asian wildlife parks.

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