"It is really a very sad day for the world when a first-world, developed country like Iceland should effectively tear up one of the great environmental achievements of the world from the last century that is the moratorium on whaling," he said.

Iceland said Tuesday it would issue licenses to hunt nine fin whales and 30 minke whales in a year, becoming only the second nation after Norway to defy outright the international moratorium that took effect in 1986.

Australia has been at the forefront of a campaign to stop the resumption of commercial whaling and has declared a whale sanctuary in a large swathe of the Southern Ocean that it considers to be its Antarctic territory.

The environmental group Greenpeace, which regularly harasses Japanese ships on whale hunts for allegedly scientific purposes in the Antarctic, said it hoped to get Iceland to reverse its decision.

"We're still evaluating as to why the Icelandic government has made this decision and we hope to talk them out of it before they actually embark on the whaling ship," said Steve Shallhorn, head of Greenpeace Australia Pacific.

"We'll have to see what pressure can be put by both governments and non-government organizations on Iceland over the next weeks and months to make sure that they don't actually start killing whales."

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