During three days of talks in Rome, South Korea said it may start commercial whaling if Japan wins the controversial compromise.

Conservationists slammed the development, while saying it was not unexpected.

"We've been warning all along that if Japan gets a deal other countries are going to want part of the action," Sue Fisher, policy director for North America for the Whale and Dolphin Conservation Society (WDCS), told AFP.

Japan hunts hundreds of whales a year in the Pacific and Antarctic using a loophole in a 1986 IWC moratorium that allows "lethal scientific research" on the ocean giants.

Norway hunts whales on the strength of a formal reservation to the moratorium, while Iceland has set its own quota in defiance of the ban.

"Coastal whaling (for Japan) would legitimise what Iceland and Norway are doing," WDCS spokesman Nicolas Entrup told AFP. "The reputation of an international treaty needs to be held up."

Greenpeace issued a terse statement saying "no whales were saved" at the IWC meeting, which it described as "disturbingly uneventful" while calling for "an urgent plan of action that would stop whaling in Antarctic waters and begin the modernisation of the IWC."

The head of the 63-year-old IWC, which is to hold its annual meeting in Madeira, Portugal, June 22-26, voiced "cautious optimism" after the Rome talks.

"I am heartened at ... the general commitment to continue to further develop a set of proposals that can command broad agreement," said IWC chairman William Hogarth of the United States in a statement.

The IWC also "deplored acts of violence against ships and once again unanimously called for action to be taken by the relevant authorities," the statement said, referring to alleged attacks by anti-whaling campaigners on Japanese research vessels.

Ahead of the Rome meeting, US President Barack Obama's administration stated its firm opposition to commercial whaling.

"It is our view that any package, to be acceptable, must result in a significant improvement in the conservation status of whales," said Nancy Sutley, chair of the White House's Council on Environmental Quality.

Hogarth, who was appointed by former president George W. Bush, crafted the planned compromise with Japan in a bid to salvage the the 84-member IWC from collapse.

Japan has repeatedly threatened to leave the IWC if the body does not shift to what Tokyo believes is its original purpose -- managing a sustainable kill of whales.

Japan defends whaling as a tradition and accuses Westerners of disrespecting its culture.

Tokyo also asserts that the treaty requires that the "by-products" of the research are not wasted, and that the income from the sale of the meat partially offsets the cost of the research.

Japan's "political will is far greater than the combined political will of the pro-conservation governments," Fisher told AFP. "The whaling issue could be resolved very quickly if the right people paid attention to it."

Human impacts on whales have skyrocketed since the IWC was created, she said, citing climate change, pollution and fishing.

"Of all the threats to whales the one that's the simplest to fix is whaling," she said, adding that the commission "needs to reflect the reality of the situation now."

For Sara Holden of Greenpeace International, the irony is that there is "virtually no market for whale meat in Japan. It's not economically viable, and the science is neither needed nor wanted."

Greenpeace has conducted opinion polls among 15-to-59-year-olds in Japan finding that 90 percent of respondents "either never or very rarely eat" whale meat, said Holden, Greenpeace's international whales campaign coordinator.

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