(from "The Japan Times", 22/Apr/1996)

Charles J.L. McKee

Through a series of blatant, hypocritical, and probably illegal actions, a number of member countries of the IWC - with the United States as ringleader - have flouted international law and ignored world trade agreements. They have done so in pursuit of domestics and international political agendas and to draw election support from so called "animal rights" organizations.

So far, two nations - Iceland and Canada - have left the IWC in protest over the commission's policies. A third, Norway, has formally and repeatedly protested a whaling moratorium it believes is in violation of the IWC's founding charter. And, Japan has proposed placing a recent IWC decision before the International Court of Justice.

Should the commission reject Japan's proposal at its 48th annual meeting in Scotland in June, Japanese officials may understandably question their continued participation in that body. If Japan departs the IWC, the commission will be a whaling organization with no members who want to resume "the development of the whaling industry".

Tracing the history of broken treaty obligations and hypocrisy by IWC member nations is a fascinating but dismaying exercise. It begins in 1946 in London with the signing of the International Convention for the Regulation of Whaling by 15 coastal or island nations.

That treaty's preamble clearly states the twin goals of the convention are "to provide for the conservation of whale stocks and thus make possible the orderly development of the whaling industry."

There are two key elements of that statement that have been deliberately ignored by many members of the commission. One is "conservation." Nowhere in the document will a reader find the word "protectionism," nor any intention to impose a worldwide ban on whaling. In fact, the other key phrase is "the orderly development of the whaling industry."

With those thoughts in mind, consider the following sorry history of the IWC:

• In the years since 1946, the membership of the commission has grown from its original 15 - all coastal or island nations with seagoing traditions - to 33 in 1995. These voting members include the tiny principality of Monaco, the desert Sultanate of Oman, landlocked Austria, and similarly landlocked Switzerland, high in the Alps and nearly 300 km from the nearest salt water.

• In 1982, a majority of IWC members voted to impose a worldwide moratorium on commercial whaling, to be phased-in until 1986. An observer of this incredible action might ask what happened to the 1946 Convention's goal of science-based "orderly development of the whaling industry."

• At the time the moratorium was approved, the IWC committed itself to establishing catch limits permitting some resumption of commercial whaling "by 1990 at the latest" and pledged to base the limits on "scientific evidence." The year 1990 came and went with no action to permit limited resumption of whaling.

• In 1993, the IWC's own Scientific Committee unanimously found that a limited harvest of the abundant minke species of whales would leave the populations of those whales undisturbed. Led by the U.S., a majority of commission members rejected the Scientific Committee's recommendations. The chairman of the committee resigned in protest, citing the IWC's obvious political agenda.

• The following year, 1994, the IWC - again led by the U.S. - voted to create a Southern Ocean Sanctuary, in which all commercial whaling would be prohibited. This action was taken despite the complete absence of any scientific support for such a sanctuary.

• During this period, the U.S. pursued a policy of hypocrisy. It rejected scientific evidence supporting minke whale harvest. It embraced the Southern Ocean Sanctuary in the absence of scientific evidence. Yet, it insisted that scientific evidence justified the annual taking of bowhead whales - an endangered species - by natives in its own state of Alaska.

• This year, the U.S. will again ask (perhaps "insist" is more accurate) the IWC to approve the taking of gray whales by Indians in the state of Washington.

• While insisting that its citizens be allowed to harvest endangered bowhead whales, the U.S. attempted to apply economic pressure on Norway to stop its limited harvest of nonendangered and abundant minke whales by threatening to prohibit fish and seafood imports from Norway. This was done under a domestic law known as the Pelly Amendment.

• Early this year, the president of the U.S. asserted that Japan has also violated the Pelly Amendment by taking a few hundred minke whales for research purposes from the estimated 760,000 in the Southern Ocean Sanctuary and 25,000 minkes in the North Pacific. Remember the SOS is the sanctuary created in the absence of scientific evidence for in need. It should also be pointed out that Japan exercised its right under the whaling convention and formally objected creation of the SOS and is not bound by its restrictions.

• The Pelly Amendment which the president cited requires that any trade sanctions be consistent with the provisions of the General Agreement on Tariffs and Trade. If the U.S. were to impose sanctions against either Norway or Japan for their commercial and research whaling, it would probably be in violations of the GATT and the recent Uruguay Round.

Given the violations of international law by the IWC - specifically, ignoring its own charter - and the blatantly hypocritical posture of much of its membership, it is surprising that any nation with a history and tradition of whaling remains a member of what has become intellectually, and perhaps morally bankrupt organization.

_