Tag Archives: Morocco

Controversial whaling proposal fails at global meeting

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23 June 2010

(Agadir, Morocco) – The International Fund for Animal Welfare (IFAW-www.ifaw.org)  announced today that a controversial proposal to legalize whaling has failed at the annual meeting of the International Whaling Commission (IWC) in Agadir, Morocco.

“Under a cloud of corruption allegations the IWC is taking a safe course, opting for a cooling off period that protects the moratorium and other IWC conservation measures,”  said Patrick Ramage, Director of IFAW’s Global Whale Campaign. “Had it been done here, this deal would have lived in infamy.”

The proposal, three years in the making, proposed a compromise between whaling and non-whaling nations which regularly clash at annual IWC meetings. Among the most hotly debated components of the proposal was a plan to overturn the worldwide ban on whaling, in place since 1986, by allowing legalized hunting of whales by Iceland, Norway, and Japan – the last three countries still hunting whales commercially. Japan, Norway, and Iceland have illegally killed nearly 35,000 whales since the inception of the moratorium.

Whaling

“This was an intense three year effort but one conducted behind closed doors and focused on defining terms under which commercial whaling would continue rather than how it would end,” said Ramage. “The proposal it produced could not withstand public scrutiny and ignored the overwhelming global support for permanent protection for whales. Any future process of negotiation should not leave the views, expertise, and perspective of the global NGO community sitting outside.”

Crisis as whaling talks move behind closed doors

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ANDREW DARBY IN AGADIR, MOROCCO
June 21, 2010

High-level talks over a global whaling peace deal are to be sent behind closed doors, in an abrupt move said to show that a bid for compromise is close to failure.

The decision to suspend the International Whaling Commission’s annual meeting shortly after it opens later today was agreed in private at the demand of the acting IWC chairman, Anthony Liverpool, Fairfax Media has learnt.

It has surprised lobbyists, as well as some IWC nations who, after months of closed door talks, wanted the controversial deal finally to be argued in the open.

The suspension also prevents the peace talks from being derailed on the floor of the  meeting by rising disquiet over Japan’s vote-buying scandal.

The British marine environment minister, Richard Benyon, had planned to raise reports of Tokyo’s largesse, including payments to support the attendance of Mr Liverpool who comes from Antigua in the Caribbean.

About 65 IWC members, including an unprecedented number of government ministers, are in Agadir to work on the deal that offers Japan, Iceland and Norway new rights to commercial whaling.

In exchange, the whalers’ catches were to be reduced overall, and there was to be an end to loopholes such as the IWC’s discredited “scientific” whaling clause.

A key negotiator said of the meeting’s suspension: “This is one last attempt to see if there is any common ground. We will be split up into small groups, and we won’t be coming back until Wednesday.”

Patrick Ramage, the global whale program director for the International Fund for Animal Welfare, said Mr Liverpool had ordered the closed-door meetings with a view to fast-tracking the proposal when the formal session reopens on Wednesday.

“Whatever one’s view on the proposal, its adoption under the present circumstances will destroy any remaining credibility for the whaling commission,”  Mr Ramage said.

Source: theage.com.au

Japanese pay for whale delegates

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The Sunday Times Insight team
Published: 20 June 2010

The chairman of this week’s international summit on whaling is being secretly funded by a Japanese company to stay in a luxury hotel.

Anthony Liverpool will open the crucial International Whaling Commission (IWC) meeting in Morocco tomorrow which could vote to lift a 24-year ban on commercial whaling.

He has accepted free flights and the £4,000 cost of staying at a hotel with a private beach during the meeting. The hotel bills of five other countries’ delegates are also being paid.

The payments will increase concern that Japan is bribing delegates to secure support for whaling and may be in breach of the IWC convention which says: “The expenses of each member of the commission … shall be determined and paid by his own government.”

Anthony Liverpool

Richard Benyon, the minister for fisheries, will raise what he called “these very serious allegations” at the IWC meeting.

On Friday Liverpool, the Antiguan IWC vice-chairman who will stand in as chairman at the meeting, said he did not know who was paying for his trip. “I am just aware of getting support through agencies,” he said.

However, inquiries have shown that his bill at a hotel in Agadir is being paid by Japan Tours and Travel of Houston, a company said to be linked to Hideuki “Harry” Wakasa, who has previously been identified as the middleman who makes secret payments to the pro-whaling Caribbean countries.