Whaling talks collapse

The controversial attempt to scrap the 24-year-old international moratorium on commercial whaling collapsed last month, to the delight of many anti-whaling campaigners and to the frustration of Japan, Norway and Iceland, the three countries which continue to hunt whales in defiance of world opinion. Delegates from the 88 member states of the International Whaling Commission (IWC) meeting in Agadir, Morocco, were unable to reach agreement after two days of secret talks on the three-year-old proposal to lift the official whaling ban in exchange for smaller, agreed kills by the whaling states. The European Union was one of the groups opposing the plan most strongly. The issue is now off the agenda for at least a year until the next meeting of the IWC, but the result was greeted as a triumph by some environmental groups who feared that the deal would put the future of the great whales in jeopardy once again. " We have won the battle to keep the ban in place, but we must continue to fight to win the war on all whaling, " said the chief executive of Britain's Whale and Dolphin Conservation Society, Chris Butler-Stroud. " The moratorium News focus stands but Japan, Iceland and Norway continue to whale outside of the sanctions of the IWC, and that is a situation that has to change. " The leader of the British delegation at the talks, the minister for the marine environment, Richard Benyon, said: " We in the UK have been consistently clear that any new agreement must reduce the number of whales that are killed each year with the aim of a complete phase-out of all commercial whaling. " However, Yasue Funayama, the Japanese whaling commissioner, said her country had offered major concessions to reach a compromise and blamed anti-whaling countries that refused to accept the killing of a single animal. The failed deal was proposed by the US, which sought agreement with The gap between the whaling nations and those opposed to the hunting of these animals widened at key International Whaling Commission talks in Morocco last month. Nigel Williams reports. In sight: Limited commercial whaling by the three whaling nations could lead to a decrease in the total catch, some conservationists argue.