Scale of Japan's aid to pro-whaling nations revealed

Security gaurds in St Kitts stop a Greenpeace protest during last week's international whaling meeting. Picture / Reuters/Greenpeace/Dang Ngo

ST KITTS - Less than a week since Japan and its allies scored a stunning victory at the International Whaling Conference -- paving the way for a possible return to commercial whaling -- the Japanese government has revealed how much money it has given to countries that support its stance.

In a written reply to a query on Japan's "marine aid" to developing countries, the government acknowledged pouring 617 million yen ($8.7 million) last year into St Kitts & Nevis, the tiny Caribbean nation that hosted the IWC conference.

Nicaragua, the top recipient of Tokyo's largesse, was awarded about $17 million, and the Pacific island cluster of Palau got $8.1 million.

All three countries voted with Japan, Iceland and Norway at last weekend's conference in favour of the "St Kitts & Nevis Declaration", calling for the 20-year ban on commercial whaling to be scrapped.

The pro-whaling camp won the ballot -- its first majority in over two decades -- by just one vote.

Conservationists said the result, while largely symbolic, spells disaster for the world's dwindling whale stocks.

The Japanese government said it had also awarded millions of dollars in "grant aid for general projects and fisheries" to Peru, which supports commercial whaling, and Samoa and Algeria, which environmentalists believe Japan is trying to recruit.

The St Kitts grant was signed on July 1st, 2005, just after last year's IWC conference in South Korea.

The aid question was tabled by Shokichi Kina, a member of the main opposition Democratic Party of Japan and a well known Okinawa-based environmental activist.

'Ridiculous'

"Japanese people don't even eat whales or dolphins anymore but still the government is pressing ahead with this campaign," he said.

"It's ridiculous to hear the fisheries ministry say that stocks are increasing when nobody really knows if that's true. Japan will be hated by the rest of the world."

The government did not refute the "vote-buying" charge in its reply to Mr Kina.

Japan has been long been accused of using multi-million dollar aid packages to swing the 70-member IWC, which has been narrowly controlled by conservationists for quarter of a century, back into the pro-whaling camp.

Many of the commission's 20 newest members, such as the Marshall Islands and St Kitts & Nevis, have no history of whaling and several, including Mongolia and Mali, have no coastlines.

Conservationists also say Japan has been known to pay the IWC subscriptions of poorer members such as Togo, which turned up late to the St Kitts conference with its US$10,000 ($16,000) membership fee in cash, although such allegations have never been proved.

But the latest information is the most detailed yet on Japan's direct grants to its supporters and will lead to calls for further investigation into the ties between foreign aid and pro-whaling votes.

Japan's chief IWC negotiator, Joji Morishita, denied last weekend that his country bought its way to victory.

"Japan gives aid to over 100 countries so why single out those that come to this conference?" he asked, claiming that the charges were an attempt by the anti-whaling bloc to smear countries that want to return to "sustainable use of whale resources".

An anonymous foreign ministry official, speaking to the Yomiuri newspaper this week dubbed allegations of vote-buying "Japan-bashing".

But Greenpeace Japan's executive director Jun Hoshikawa said it was "obvious" that Japan's aid had influenced the St Kitts vote.

"Otherwise, why is money being poured into the country?" he asked. "Tax money is being spent on something Japanese people do not want on a place they don't know."

Splurged

Environmentalists in Japan say the drive to end the 1986 ban is backed by a group of nationalist politicians who have splurged over $160 million in public money since 2000 on six small Caribbean nations, despite widespread indifference at home to whaling.

An internet survey released last week claimed that over 70 per cent of Japanese people oppose a return to commercial whaling on the high seas.

Whale-consumption has been declining in Japan since the 1960s and is now eaten regularly by less than one-per cent of the population.

The government's expensive campaign has flown largely beneath the Japanese media's radar.

The St Kitts conference, for instance, to which Japan sent 59 delegates - nearly five times the UK presence - received scant coverage in Japan until the pro-whaling vote was announced.

Conservative newspapers have since hailed the result as a victory for Japanese negotiators. One called it a "return to common sense."

Japan and Iceland currently engage in what is controversially called 'scientific whaling' while Norway ignores the moratorium.

Pro-whalers need 75 per cent of the IWC votes to completely scrap the ban, still well beyond their reach.

But many fear they will use the momentum from what Mr Morishita called the 'historic' weekend vote, to dominate next year's IWC conference in Alaska.

- INDEPENDENT