Britain launches anti-whaling recruitment drive

LONDON, Feb 1 (Reuters) Britain set out to recruit more anti-whaling nations to join the International Whaling Commission and head off a drive by Japan to resume commercial hunting of cetaceans.

The move follows an informal vote last year that for the first time in two decades gave pro-whaling nations a majority in the 72-nation IWC amid accusations from environmental groups that Japan had simply been buying votes with development aid.

''We believe that whale-watching is the only use of whales which is both humane and sensible,'' Prime Minister Tony Blair wrote in the foreword to a glossy brochure encouraging anti-whaling nations to join up.

''We urge your government to join the UK and other anti-whaling nations in the International Whaling Commission to ensure that our generation meets its global responsibility to protect whales.'' The IWC, created in 1946 to safeguard whales, brought in a global hunting ban in 1986.

Yet the brochure notes that southern hemisphere blue whale numbers have slumped to 1,700 now from 240,000 in 1990. The humpback whale population has fallen to 25,000 from 115,000, and there are only 150 western gray whales left alive.

Since 1993 the number of whales killed each year has surged to over 1,900 from 550, and over 30,000 have now been killed since the ban came into force, it adds.

''Twenty years on, the reasons for the moratorium remain valid,'' it said. ''Many populations and some entire species are still under threat of extinction.'' Japan still kills some 700 whales a year for research.

Norway killed nearly 1,000 last year and Iceland killed 60.

Despite claims that the killing is for scientific purposes, whale meat is openly sold in Japan where it is a delicacy and Iceland is trying to open up a commercial trade with Tokyo.

So far this has been rejected by Japan because it has a glut of whale meat -- so much that a report last year said it was being sold as dog food.

''I hope this will make the Icelanders realise that there is no market, that it is uneconomic and they should see that it is not worth it,'' Robbie Marsland, director of the UK branch of the International Fund for Animal Welfare (IFAW), told Reuters yesterday.

Japan, which says a blanket ban on whaling is unnecessary as some species have recovered enough to be hunted again, has called a special meeting of IWC nations on February 13 before the organisation's annual meeting in May in Anchorage to try to change the emphasis to whale management from a moratorium.

But some 26 anti-whaling nations including Britain, Australia and the United States have said they will boycott the meeting, billed by Tokyo as a last hope for the divided body.

''The IWC is the only body mandated to manage whales so, while we are grateful to the Japanese for raising the issue, we will not be going to their meeting,'' a spokesman for Britain's Department of the Environment told Reuters.

Despite last year's informal vote the ban remains in force because it needs a 75 per cent majority to overturn it. But anti-whaling nations fear a vote in May could be too close for comfort.

Reuters SBA VP0437