Japanese vote buying the buzz of whaling meet
AGADIR, Morocco (AP) — Accusations that Japan uses aid money and personal favours to buy votes have quietly circulated for years around the International Whaling Commission (IWC), which oversees the conservation of the whales that Japan regularly hunts.
Now, a sting operation by a London newspaper that secretly filmed officials from six developing countries negotiating for bribes has brought such allegations into the open, at least in the corridors of the commission’s annual meeting.
The Sunday Times of London secretly filmed the officials talking with reporters who portrayed themselves as emissaries of a Swiss billionaire wanting anti-whaling votes at the IWC’s meeting in Morocco.
The six indicated that any offer from the Swiss would have to top what Japan already gives them. Tanzania’s top delegate was quoted as saying he had accepted trips to Japan, where he was offered free “massages” in his hotel room, which he said he declined.
For some of Japan’s harshest critics, the Sunday Times catching officials on tape acknowledging they received benefits from Japan was proof of undue influence on the 88-nation commission, which in its most important meeting in decades is considering a proposal for a 10-year suspension of the 1986 ban on commercial whaling.
“Vote buying is the dirty little secret at the IWC,” said environmentalist Patrick Ramage, who has been attending conferences for 15 years. He called it “a slow-motion hostile takeover of an international forum”. And while all powerful nations try to wield their influence, Japan’s “multi-year sustained effort is really quite unique”, he said yesterday.
Japan denies any wrongdoing, and says allegations of vote-buying are meant to “devaluate” Japan’s position at the IWC.
“It is national policy to support developing countries,” said Hideki Moronuki of the Japanese Ministry for Agriculture, Forestry and Fisheries. “Do you think that kind of ODA (overseas development assistance) is some kind of bribe? I don’t think so.”
Japan insists its whaling is advance scientific knowledge of whales, creatures about which much remains mysterious. But most of the animals end up as meat products rather than lab specimens, and the Japanese say their continued whaling is a matter of national pride.
The Japanese Government builds fisheries, harbours, schools and contributes to development budgets of more than 20 countries that consistently vote in Japan’s interests at the IWC and are likely to support whatever position it takes on
the proposal.
In its latest edition, the paper said the US$6,000 hotel bill for the acting chairman of the Morocco conference, Anthony Liverpool, was prepaid with a credit card that the paper traced to Japan Tours and Travel, Inc, based in Houston, Texas. Liverpool is a diplomat from Antigua and Barbuda and its ambassador to Japan.
When asked by the paper about accepting the money from Japanese interests, Liverpool was quoted as saying, “Yes, but there is nothing extremely odd about that.”
The whaling commission was created after World War II to conserve and manage whale stocks. Tens of thousands of animals were killed each year until the IWC adopted the moratorium, and now about 1,500 animals are killed each year by Japan, Norway and Iceland. Japan says its killing of hundreds of whales every year is for scientific research.