Animal welfare campaigners urged the Government to "fight fire with fire" yesterday as environment ministers met in Alaska for a four-day showdown over whaling. Countries opposed to commercial hunting are hopeful of gathering enough votes at the International Whaling Conference to overturn a motion passed last year calling for its resumption. But Greenpeace accused ministers of not doing enough to persuade other countries to ensure they attended the annual summit and were able to vote. Last year, pro-whaling nations led by Japan succeeded in passing a declaration, by one vote, calling for a "resumption of commercial whaling on a sustainable basis". It was seen as a symbolic victory in a campaign to gain the 75 per cent support needed to overturn a ban of more than 20 years on commercial whaling altogether. Japan, Iceland and Norway all exploit loopholes to continue the practice - partly under the guise of scientific research - to the fury of campaigners.

Barry Gardiner, the Biodiversity minister, is attending the conference, confident that the UK has succeeded in winning the vital backing of several more nations. A spokeswomen for the Department for Environment, Food and Rural Affairs said the UK "strongly supports" the moratorium and would resist all attempts to lift it. "The UK will strongly urge Japan, Iceland and Norway to cease whaling and will encourage any country planning scientific research to use non-lethal methods," she said. "Our guiding principle will be that neither the condition of whale populations nor the measures foreseen to control whaling are such as to justify a resumption of commercial whaling."

The UK had led efforts to recruit more support to the cause, she said in a booklet for which Tony Blair wrote a foreword. "We have already had some success: Croatia, Cyprus, Greece and Slovenia have already joined in time for this year's meeting. Peru and Costa Rica have regained voting rights, and several more EU states are indicating their intention to join in time for next year's meeting." However, Willie Mackenzie, the Greenpeace UK oceans campaigner, said it was still unclear how much extra support the pro-whalers had mustered over the past 12 months. And he complained that Mr Blair had not met calls to write to other sympathetic leaders asking for their support, leaving such diplomatic moves until after the IWC meeting. That was "pointless", he said. "Greenpeace and other NGOs have been working for a long time to persuade the UK and other like-minded states to step up their game and fight fire with fire and take this on at a higher level. "Some of that may be bearing fruit," he said. Defra said that it would also use the IWC to promote the adoption of a new whale sanctuary in the South Atlantic.
(By Joe Churcher, The Independent, 29/05/2007)