The United States is waging an uphill battle to win a mandatory three-fourths majority to maintain bowhead whale hunting quotas for its native Alaskan communities and may need Japan's influence in the IWC.

Japan meanwhile is campaigning for its traditional coastal communities to catch an unspecified number of Minke whales under the same IWC rules allowing the Inupia and Yup'ik peoples of Alaska to hunt the giant creatures.

Aside from the world's two richest nations, Russia, Greenland and St Vincent and the Grenadines are seeking extension at the IWC of their aboriginal subsistence hunts for the next five years.

Diplomats said the five were striving to forge a compromise on a joint package maintaining their aboriginal hunting quotas in a bid to gain swift approval at the talks, leaving Japan in the cold.

But Greenland could spoil the party as the Danish territory reportedly wants to add a new species, humpback whales, to its quota and also expand the number of bowheads for its aboriginal hunters.

"If the joint package breaks up, then it's going to be a free for all, with the United States facing new difficulties getting its own quota approved," one conference official told AFP, speaking on condition of anonymity.

Kitty Block, director of Humane Society International said, "It is our hope that the United States would not cave in to any pressure" that could lead to any lifting of the moratorium on commercial whaling.

"Commercial whaling has no place in modern-day society and to use any political wedges to break that down, to put in a US position to somehow support commercial whaling is an abomination," she said.

But Scott Smullen, spokesman for the US delegation, told AFP: "We have made it very clear that there will be no deal made on the bowhead quota and any idea of an exchange is dead on arrival."

Japan too says it has not been pushing for any deal for the bowhead quota and that it has given assurance that it will support the US proposal.

"All it is asking is to be given a fair deal regarding its own similar proposal for traditional Japanese whaling," Glenn Inwood, spokesman for the Japanese delegation, told AFP.

While green groups say the Japanese proposal for "emergency relief" quotas for four of its small whaling towns in effect boils down to commercial whaling, Tokyo has skillfully devised a plan almost identical to the US request.

Both plans are sustainable, according to officials who attended the two-week IWC scientific committee meetings here in the run-up to the plenary sessions this week.

"There is a potential for the Aboriginal quotas to frustrate progress in any other issue if used as a bargaining chip or tool by Japan," said Patrick Ramage of the International Fund for Animal Welfare.

Australia, New Zealand and several other anti-whaling countries have strongly attacked Japan's research program as a thinly disguised and subsidized exercise in commercial whaling.

Some 1,000 whales fall prey to Japanese harpoons every year in the name of "scientific research."

Japan last year won a non-binding resolution in favor of commercial whaling, but fell short of the numbers needed to overturn the moratorium.

Anti-whaling nations are said to have a slim majority this year.

Greenpeace says the whales are facing a bleak future as they often are hit by ships, choked by plastic bags, poisoned by pollution and starved because of changes in food supply through climate change.

"It is incredible that the IWC is still entertaining the idea of debating commercial whaling," said Junichi Sato, Greenpeace whales campaign coordinator in Japan, who is attending the IWC talks.

earlier related report
Opponents Of Commercial Whaling Are Hypocrites Says Norway
Anchorage (AFP) May 28 - Norway, which allegedly conducts the world's largest overtly commercial whale hunt, has described the United States and others fiercely opposed to commercial whaling as hypocrites. The anti-whaling lobby, it said, were bent on destroying the International Whaling Commission (IWC), a 75-member body aimed at regulating whaling as well as in charge of conservation of the large creatures.

For years, anti-commercial whaling nations notably Australia, Britain, New Zealand and the United States have been actively lobbying against Japan, Norway and Iceland in their bid to lift a two-decade old moratorium on commercial whaling.

Karsten Klepsvik, the Norwegian commissioner to the IWC, said the anti-whaling nations had depicted a "very strange picture" of the whaling nations.

"In fact, one of biggest whaling nations is actually the United States but we support their proposal to maintain bowhead whale hunting quotas for their native Alaskan communities, just like the aboriginal subsistence hunts in Russia and Greenland," he told AFP.

"There are lots of illegal whaling activities in these (accusing) countries on smaller whales but the picture depicted about us is totally wrong and everyone here should be honest and should stop what I would claim is hypocricy," Klepscvik said. He spoke at the sidelines of what is expected to be a stormy annual IWC meeting in Anchorage, Alaska beginning Monday.

The time had come for the IWC to play an effective role in regulating whaling as enshrined in its founding principles, he said.

The IWC is highly polarized between the pro- and anti-whaling groups and movement on key issues are stalled because major policy changes require a three fourth majority.

"Those of us who are in favour of very limited whaling are willing to reach a compromise and to give them probaly the best (whaling) management scheme for any marine species at all, the most strictest one with the lowest quotas but this doesn't seem to be enough for them.

"And accordingly, they seem to be happy by continuing to insist on zero quotas and insisting that the moratorium should be maintained," he said.

Norway conducts the world's largest overtly commercial whale hunt which this year includes the highest self-allocated coastal catch allowance since the country's return to commercial whaling 14 years ago, charged the Whale and Dolphin Conservation Society.

It said in a report in conjunction with the Anchorage talks that Norway had continued to kill minke whales in the North Atlantic since 1993 through a legal "objection" lodged against the moratorium in 1982. The "objection" serves to exempt Norway from the ban, the society said.

It added that Norway had increased its self-allocated whaling quota at an "alarming rate" in recent years, from 670 in 2004 to 796 in 2005. In 2006 and 2007, Norway awarded itself a "massive" quota of 1,052 minke whales. This year, the society said Norway allocated its quotas differently, allowing 291 more whales to be killed in the easier to reach coastal areas, and lowering the quota for the offshore and remote Jan Mayan area. The move is likely the result of pressure from a struggling industry, which has failed to meet its quota allocations in the harder-to-reach far distant waters. But Klepscvik said Norway was concerned about "the standstill in the IWC over (approving) a new (whaling) management schedule."

"We regret to say that it doesn't seem as if there will be any progress at all," he said. "The underlying reason for this is very simple -- those against whaling are not willing to give anything at all."

He said there was already a IWC management scheme on the table which should be acceptable to everyone but "the critical component is that those who are against whaling have to accept that this scheme will open for a very limited catch on a very few species, on small whales. It could also open for "commercial activities" but "is very limited and very safe," he said.

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