Australia's resurgent opposition will order the navy to patrol Antartic waters to gather evidence to prosecute Japanese whaling ships if it wins this year's national elections.
CANBERRA -- Australia's resurgent opposition will order the navy to patrol Antartic waters to gather evidence to prosecute Japanese whaling ships if it wins this year's national elections.
The plan, unveiled by centre-left Labor Party leader Kevin Rudd, would see warships sent beyond Australian waters into the country's self-proclaimed Antarctic territory, not recognised by other nations and which includes a whale sanctuary.
"There's been so many resolutions passed by the International Whaling Commission (IWC) in recent years expressing its outrage over Japan's so-called scientific whaling approach," Rudd said.
"Obviously that approach of international pressure through the IWC has not worked."
Rudd's party has been riding high in polls ahead of an election expected around November. Expectations have been building that Labor is in a strong position to unseat the conservative government, in power for over a decade. A Rudd spokesman said the navy would gather evidence for a legal case against Japan in the International Court of Justice in The Hague, which was allowable under international sea law.
Japan's fisheries agency, confident its whaling rights will be confirmed, has challenged any country to take it to the court for a binding judgment.
International law specialist Don Rothwell said Rudd's promised patrols would breach the 1959 Antarctic Treaty, which deemed Antarctica to be a demilitarised zone, and possibly spark an international incident.
"Any use of an Australian military vessel or aircraft in the Antarctic treaty area, even for surveillance purposes, would certainly draw concerns, not only in Japan, but a number of other Antarctic treaty countries," said Rothwell, of the Australian National University.
Rothwell recently chaired a group of law experts commissioned by the International Fund for Animal Welfare to urge anti-whaling nations to use international courts to halt Tokyo.
Japan has long resisted pressure to stop scientific whaling and this year plans to hunt 935 minke and for the first time 50 humpbacks. Humpbacks were hunted nearly to extinction until protected by the IWC in 1966.
Australia's Environment Minister Malcolm Turnbull said Rudd's plan to use the navy outside Australian waters would be seen as an act of piracy. Japan may send its own navy to escort the whaling fleet in Antarctic waters, he said.
"As far as Japan is concerned, they are international waters and they are entitled to freedom of navigation," Turnbull said. Turnbull heads to Alaska this week for a meeting of the IWC, whose 72 members are bitterly divided over a 25-year-old global moratorium on whaling which Japan and other nations such as Norway oppose.
Tokyo has been accused of doling out $750 million in aid to small Caribbean and Pacific countries to gather support in the IWC for overturning the 1986 ban on all whaling.
Japan says whaling is a cherished cultural tradition and began scientific research whaling in 1987.
The meat, which under commission rules must be sold for consumption, ends up in supermarkets and restaurants, but the appetite for what is now a delicacy is fading.
($1=A$1.22)
Source: Reuters
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