Australia: diplomacy, not courts to stop whaling

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(Agencies)
Updated: 2009-01-22 14:23

HOBART, Australia - Australia's leader rebuffed a conservation group's offer to stop harassing Japanese whalers if Canberra takes legal action against them, saying Thursday he will instead rely on diplomacy to halt the hunt.

A man is seen on Greenpeace's anti-whaling ship Esperanza docked at Yokohama Port in Yokohama, south of Tokyo, April 6, 2007. [Agencies]

The US-based Sea Shepherd Conservation Society offered Wednesday to suspend its strategy of using a ship to disrupt the Japanese fleet in treacherous Antarctic waters if Australia agreed to take Japan to court to end the whaling.

But Rudd said Australia had already initiated an International Whaling Commission review of Japan's so-called scientific whaling, which would report mid-year.

Under the commission's rules, the mammals may be killed for research but not for commercial purposes. Australia argues that Japan's scientific program is commercial whaling in disguise.

"It is within that framework that Australia, together with other countries, is directly engaging the government of Japan," Rudd told reporters in the southern port city of Hobart.

"We are engaged in a process of diplomacy to see, with our friends in Tokyo, if we can work our way through this," he said.

Rudd's government has backtracked on the issue since late in 2007, when it sent a customs ship to Antarctica to collect photographs and video of Japanese whaling activities that it said could be used as evidence in an international court case.

Sea Shepherd captain Paul Watson said Thursday that Australian diplomacy had failed against Japanese whaling for more than 20 years.

"Japan looks on diplomacy as just a stalling tactic in order to keep doing what they're doing _ they haven't given an inch," Watson told The Associated Press by satellite phone from his ship.

Watson's ship, Steve Irwin, left Hobart Wednesday after a refueling stop. Watson expects to find the whalers in a week and again prevent them from harpooning whales.

Rudd's government came to power at elections in 2007 on a promise to pursue legal options against Japanese whaling in the International Court of Justice or the International Tribunal for the Law of the Sea.

The Japanese fleet plans to harvest up to 935 minke whales and 50 fin whales this season.