Commission Attempts Whaling Compromise

An international ban on commercial whaling that has stood for 22 years will face new challenges next week when negotiators from around the world gather in Florida.

International Whaling Commission delegates scheduled talks in St. Pete Beach to try to work through disagreements one delegate described as having "turned debate in the IWC into highly publicized trench warfare."

A retired United Nations diplomat, former Under Secretary-General Alvaro de Soto, is scheduled to lead closed-door discussions in hopes of finding common ground.

Conflict on the commission centers on the moratorium, which dozens of nations accepted in 1986 over concern that the giant mammals could be hunted to extinction. Some countries, led by Japan, argue a full ban is unneeded now and say the commission is failing to do its original job - managing whale populations as a resource to be used.

"There's been two camps that have been at a bit of a gridlock," said Scott Smullen, a National Oceanic and Atmospheric Administration spokesman. NOAA manages U.S. participation in the commission.

The gathering is for a small working group that cannot change anything by itself, but it could negotiate a proposal for changes and ask the full commission to adopt that next year.

Some whale advocates worry that commissioners who are tired of rancor could abandon protections many Americans assume are permanent.

"I think of whales as being saved in the '80s. ... And that's exactly what's being overturned, or could be overturned," said Jake Levenson, a spokesman for the International Fund for Animal Welfare.

Commission members identified more than 30 subjects that might be taken up, with no guarantee of addressing any one item. Included in the mix is a Japanese proposal to allow coastal hunting of one type of whale, the minke, which many whalers argue is plentiful.

"The impact of the moratorium on commercial whaling in these communities has been enormous," the Japanese proposal added. The request suggested negotiation about any details, including the number of whales, and argued that coastal whaling could be authorized without undoing the commercial moratorium that governs hunting across the world's oceans.