Whaling ban applauded despite fears of Japan sidestep

Australia and New Zealand on Tuesday applauded a court decisionthat Japan must halt its annual Antarctic whale hunt, but raised fears it couldsidestep the order and begin whaling again under a new "scientific" guise.The United Nations' Hague-based International Court of Justice (ICJ) ruled onMonday that Japan's whaling programme was a commercial activity disguised asscience, and said it must revoke existing whaling licences. A "deeply disappointed" Tokyo said it would honour the ruling but did not excludethe possibility of future whaling programmes, with New Zealand expressingconcerns Japan may try to circumvent the order."The ICJ decision sinks a giant harpoon into the legality of Japan's whalingprogramme," New Zealand Foreign Minister Murray McCully said. "It still does leave Japan with a decision to make after they've digested this, which isto look at whether they try to devise a new programme that is scientifically basedthat they could embark upon whaling in the Southern Ocean again."Our task is to make sure that we carry out a diplomatic conversation that dissuadesthem from embarking on that course."A Japanese minister on Tuesday defended whaling -- seen by some as an importantcultural practice -- but stopped short of detailing what next steps Japan would take."Whale meat is an important source of food, and the government's position to use itbased on scientific facts has not changed," Agriculture, Forestry and FisheriesMinister Yoshimasa Hayashi told a press conference."We will scrutinise the verdict and study (measures to be taken) swiftly," he saidaccording to the Jiji news agency. Japan also has a coastal whaling programme which is not covered by the ban.Australia, backed by New Zealand, hauled Japan before the ICJ in 2010 in a bid to end the annual Southern Ocean hunt.Tokyo has long been accused of exploiting a legal loophole in the 1986 ban oncommercial whaling that allowed the practice to collect scientific data. Japan haskilled 10,000 of the giant mammals under the scheme since 1988, Australia hasalleged.International law expert Steven Freeland, from the University of Western Sydney, saidJapan could simply redesign its whaling programme to skirt the ruling. He pointedout that the ICJ confirmed scientific research can include killing whales -- just not somany."The problem for Japan was its failure to take proper account of non-lethal methodsof research or to justify the actual catch numbers it had declared," he said."Japan may instead take a very close look at why its implementation of (its research programme) fell foul of its legal obligations and perhaps seek to design andultimately implement a new whaling programme that takes into account all of thoseelements."Japan had argued that its JARPA II research programme was aimed at studying theviability of whale hunting, but the ICJ found it had failed to examine ways of doing the research without killing whales, or at least while killing fewer of them.Masayuki Komatsu, a former head negotiator for Japan on the whaling issue, saidTokyo had been a victim of its own lax approach over the last decade."It became clear in the court procedure and hearings... that Japan was not ambitiousenough about its scientific research as it did not catch as many whales as it neededfor obtaining data," he said."As a result, the entire research whaling programme was judged as a commercialhunt."A respected blogger and social commentator on Japanese issues, who goes by thename of Hikosaemon, said the narrow issue of whether or not the whalingprogramme was "science" largely missed the point."I think it is clear that both sides here... were seeking moral vindication of theirpositions," he told AFP."Even if it can fix the technical issues with its scientific whaling programme... Japanwill need to weigh up whether it is worth the increasing PR damage this issuecauses." The irony, added Hikosaemon, is that the issue of whaling is itself not particularlyimportant for many Japanese. But efforts "to demonise Japan over this issue have galvanised a siege mentality thathas transformed this from an issue about the right to hunt and eat whales, into amore fundamental issue of fair treatment among countries with different culturalvalues."Among the 16 judges, 12 -- including ones from Russia and China -- supported the verdict which ordered Japan to stop Antarctic whaling, according to Japanese pressreports.The four judges who opposed it were Japan's Hisashi Owada, and judges fromFrance, Morocco and Somalia. Owada, 81, a former Japanese vice foreign ministerand ambassador to the United Nations, is the father of Crown Princess Masako, the wife of Crown Prince Naruhito.