Japan:Japan launches its most determined bid yet to end the two-decade ban on whale-hunting tomorrow when it hosts a special meeting that some fear could seal the fate of the International Whaling Commission (IWC).
The three-day Tokyo conference on "normalising" the IWC makes good a long-standing threat by Japan to bypass the world's whaling regulatory body, which it says has been "hijacked" by environmentalists.
"The IWC has lost its purpose as an organisation responsible for the conservation and management of whales," says the conference organiser, the Japan Fisheries Agency.
Japan claims the 1986 moratorium that ended commercial whaling is no longer needed and wants the IWC to shift from protecting whales to regulating whale stocks, which it says are recovering.
The conference opens as Japanese boats in the Antarctic hunt a quota of over 1,000 minke, Bryde's, sei, sperm and fin whales in their largest "scientific whaling" expedition so far. The fleet is being trailed by environmentalists from Greenpeace and Sea Shepherd, whose members clashed with the whalers in the Antarctic waters last week.
Later this year Japan's fleet plans to kill 50 humpbacks - a species listed as endangered - in a move likely to provoke controversy at the next IWC conference in Anchorage, Alaska, when it meets in May.
The whaling body is already bitterly divided following a majority vote last year in favour of the now infamous "St Kitts declaration", which argued that whales must be culled to save dwindling fish stocks.
But the Tokyo conference has already run into trouble before it starts.
Only a handful of the IWC's 72 member countries have said they will send delegates and 22 countries, including Britain, New Zealand and Australia are boycotting the meeting.
The US also appears to have pulled out and Denmark, which plans to attend, has been bombarded with protests from around the world, urging it to reconsider.
Of those mainly African, Caribbean and Pacific countries that will attend, many are likely to be recipients of Japan's "fisheries grant aid", a form of development aid that conservationists say is used to bribe pro-whaling supporters.
"A total of 22 of the 32 countries that voted with Japan on the St Kitts declaration have some sort of financial relationship with Japan," said Junichi Sato, Japan's Greenpeace whaling spokesman.
Fisheries Agency spokesman Joji Morishita called the boycott "extremely regrettable". "
This is an opportunity to end the stalemate of the IWC and help us achieve a more flexible approach to whaling," he said.