KEY POINTS:
Negotiations over the fate of 50 humpback whales in the harpoon sights of the Japanese fishing fleet have dragged on into another day, with Britain and America joining talks brokered by New Zealand and Australia.
The extraordinary negotiations between the anti-whaling nations and the Japanese have reportedly overshadowed the main programme at the International Whaling Commission meeting in Alaska.
New Zealand and Australia have been lobbying Japan to scrap plans to kill 50 humpbacks included as part of next summer's Japanese scientific whaling programme. Those efforts led to a meeting yesterday between the three nations - a discussion understood to be unparalleled in recent IWC forums.
Japan also invited the United States, as host nation, to yesterday's meeting, while New Zealand and Australia invited Britain - adding further weight to the informal gathering.
New Zealand Conservation Minister Chris Carter said while it had been an eventful day, no decisions had been reached. The delegations would meet again this morning NZT.
"We are still talking, so where there is life there is hope," Mr Carter said. "I am reasonably optimistic but not certain that we can come to a point where the humpbacks are off the schedule for next summer."
The Japanese delegation opened the meeting by again raising its request that four coastal communities be allowed to begin whaling, in exchange for Japan not hunting humpbacks. New Zealand and Australia had previously ruled out any such deal, and Mr Carter said he told the Japanese everyone was wasting their time if that was what the meeting was to be about.
"Traditional whaling is just by indigenous people. It's whaling for survival, not whaling for cash."
Discussions continued around future reforms of how the IWC operates, and it seems likely any deal which sees the Japanese leave the humpback whales unmolested will involve New Zealand and Australian support for changes to the commission.
Mr Carter said he did not want to expand on the negotiations because they were ongoing, and the Japanese were awaiting further instructions from Tokyo.
"As far as the other proposals we put up were concerned, none of them involved commercial whaling and none of them involved killing more whales," Mr Carter said.
"I'm bullish in so much that the Japanese want to talk, despite knowing we won't compromise on coastal whaling."
