KEY POINTS:
Anti-whaling countries will be relying on Japan's goodwill to drop plans to include 50 humpback whales in its scientific whaling programme, Conservation Minister Chris Carter says.
Mr Carter said conservation-minded countries would hold the whip hand at next week's International Whaling Commission meeting in Alaska but they would
not be able to halt Japan adding new species to its scientific programme list.
"There's no way we can stop them listing species on their so-called "Japa 2" - their scientific programme in the Southern Ocean," Mr Carter said yesterday.
However, New Zealand and other countries were lobbying Japan to drop its plans to hunt the endangered species of whale.
"We are trying to persuade the Japanese to drop the humpbacks as a gesture of goodwill."
Last year, Japan won a simple majority at the annual IWC meeting for the first time - a significant milestone in its diplomatic drive to win support for an end to a moratorium on commercial whaling.
A slim majority of members voted in support of commercial whaling but Japan did not have the wider margin of support needed to overturn the 20-year-old moratorium.
Last week, Japan announced an aid deal with Laos, which would likely see the landlocked Asian country join the IWC on Japan's side.
Japan has been accused of tying aid to poor countries to IWC membership but Mr Carter said it was unlikely to hold a simple majority on the issue of commercial whaling at the meeting this year.
Croatia and Israel had joined the IWC on the conservationist side and Panama, Nicaragua and Costa Rica had all switched sides, seeing "eco tourism as their future", he said.
The Solomon Islands, which last year voted on Japan's side, would not attend this year and Greek Prime Minister Kostas Karamanlis had said his country planned to join the whaling body and was expected to vote on the conservationists' side.
Japan's last Southern Ocean whale hunt ended in chaos after high-profile protests by the Sea Shepherd organisation and Greenpeace and a fire on one of its ships, the Nisshin Maru.
New Zealand gave the ship communications support and advice after the fire left it disabled about 100km off the Antarctic coastline.
Mr Carter said another issue that would be tackled at the meeting would be the quota for "aboriginal subsistence hunting" for bowhead whales in Alaska and the Aleutian Islands.
The quota is set every five years and requires a 75 per cent vote in IWC.
New Zealand supported whaling for small indigenous communities where whale meat was one of their few sources of food, they used traditional methods and would support the United States bid for the quota.
However, Mr Carter said the quota was one area where Japan could cause trouble for the US if it decided to throw its weight around.
A New Zealand delegation, led by whaling commissioner Sir Geoffrey Palmer, is in Anchorage for scientific rounds leading up to the main meeting, which starts next Monday.
- NZPA