LONDON, (Reuter) - Norway stormed out of the International Whaling Commission and a disgruntled Russia dropped a request for an exemption from the whaling ban on Friday, the last day of a divisive annual meeting.
The Norwegian delegation at the meeting in Aberdeen, Scotland, was infuriated by a resolution passed by the IWC censuring it for continuing to hunt whales, and by what it sees as the dominance of anti-whalers in the Commission. The IWC voted in a resolution ordering Norway to honour the organisation's 1982 moratorium on global whaling, to clampdown on smuggling of whalemeat and to provide information about its stockpiles of meat and blubber, delegates said.
Norway, which opted out the 1982 moratorium and has set a catch quota of 425 minke whales for this year, was also told it could not lift a ban on exporting whale products. In a long and angry speech, Norway's IWC commissioner, Kare Bryn, accused the IWC of overstretching its powers and acting like a dictatorship. His delegation returned to the conference after a couple of hours.
"We just wanted to make a protest. We want to continue to work with the IWC and change things from within," Norway's IWC commissioner Kare Bryn told Reuters by telephone.
The resolution censuring Norway is passed by the IWC every year and has become almost a ritual.
"It was a signal that this process has to stop. It's too late for this year, it's much more directed at next year and the year after," said Bryn.
The IWC moratorium set zero catch limits for all whaling nations with the intention of resuming hunts once whales were no longer under threat of extinction. But as whale populations have recovered, anti-whaling nations have shifted their stance in favour of outlawing whale hunting altogether.
Norway and Japan, which catches some 300 minke whales a year under the guise of "research," accuse the IWC of breaking its treaty and they claim to have growing support. But anti-whalers still hold a strong majority in the IWC.
Russia on Friday dropped a request that Siberian whalers from the Chukotska peninsula be allowed to catch five bowhead whales after it became clear that it would not get the required three-quarters majority in a vote for approval. Russia said it would not repeat its request.
The United States on Thursday withdrew a similar request for the North American Indian Makah tribe to catch five grey whales, saying it would reintroduce it next year when it had come up with some answers to concerns raised by IWC delegates.
The IWC permits "aboriginal whaling" by cultures with a long history of whaling who rely on the meat for sustenance, but delegates were not convinced the Makah tribe really needed the whales since they stopped their hunt in 1926.
The Chukotska whalers already have a quota allowing them to catch 140 grey whales, but last year they caught only 85. Delegates were concerned that the whalers would sell meat from the endangered bowhead whales in defiance of the IWC moratorium, or that, like the grey whale meat it would be used to feed foxes on Siberian fur farms.
The IWC also agreed on a resolution committing it to investigate environmental threats to whales, which scientists say are now more of a danger than hunting. But even this was not an easy ride, because Japan and Norway objected to elements that would restrict the killing of whales for research.