(Sydney Morning Herald)
Secret dealing on whale hunts
Daniel Flitton and Philip Dorling
January 4, 2011
Activists clash with whalers at sea
Both anti-whaling activists, and a Japanese whaling institute, release footage of a New Year's Day clash at sea as activists try to disrupt a whale hunt.
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AUSTRALIA was secretly prepared to cut a deal with Japan to accept a continued whale hunt even though it publicly moved to haul Tokyo before an international court over its ''scientific'' whaling program.
US diplomatic cables obtained by WikiLeaks reveal that Australia was willing to compromise with Japan as late as last February but that any deal must result in a much lower level of whaling and exclude the hunt from waters near Antarctica.
A compromise under which Japan would kill 5000 fewer whales over 10 years - provided larger varieties such as humpback and fin whales were not taken and loopholes to allow so-called scientific whaling were closed - was discussed.
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The disclosures come as pressure mounts on the federal government to send its new Southern Ocean patrol ship to watch over the latest confrontation between the anti-whaling group on Sea Shepherd and the Japanese fleet off the Antarctic coast.
The cables show that the then environment minister Peter Garrett warned the US ambassador in Canberra on February 5 last year that Labor felt boxed in by moves by the Greens in Parliament to examine Japanese ''spy flights'' over anti-whaling ships.
Mr Garrett said the flights had strengthened the anti-whaling mood in Australia and made it difficult for the government to compromise with Japan.
A fortnight later and just before a visit by the Japanese foreign minister, the then prime minister Kevin Rudd went on television to say the hunt must be abandoned.
''What we're putting to the Japanese is to take where they are now, which is the slaughter of some hundreds of whales each year, and reduce that to zero,'' he said on February 19.
He added that Australia would take Japan to the International Court of Justice over the hunt, which the government has done.
Yesterday WikiLeaks released a selection of the cables on its website and others were provided exclusively to the Herald. They show the US involvement in the increasingly bitter dispute between Japan and anti-whaling nations, including European countries and Australia.
A cable in 2009 details how US diplomats urged Japan to take ''symbolic action'' to cut the number of whales killed while promising to ''work hard to make sure the [European Union] and Australia do not block a compromise''.
The US suggested Japan stop hunting fin whales but Japan told the US Australia's proposal to phase out research whaling was ''a non-starter''.
In Australia, diplomats were urging their political masters to strike a deal to move past the gridlock at the International Whaling Commission, the key global forum for such negotiations.
Paula Watt, of the marine environment section of the Foreign Affairs Department, told the US last January that Japan was using tough tactics in the negotiations but that for any deal to be acceptable to Australia it must include a minimum number of whales saved, suggesting 5000 over 10 years.
But a month later she complained to US diplomats that efforts to strike a deal had ''bounced off'' Mr Garrett and his staff - at the same time as Mr Garrett's chief of staff, David Williams, was telling the US Australia could accept a compromise.
According to a cable from December 2009, Mr Garrett told the US ''he was personally more committed to ending whaling than the Foreign Affairs experts negotiating with Japan''. He said he did not support negotiating with Japan to allow coastal whaling, especially if it did not stop whaling in the Southern Ocean.
And in October that year Mr Garrett challenged the US over what he saw as unilateral moves in whaling negotiations and attempts to influence internal deliberations in Australia after a letter from the US Secretary of State, Hillary Clinton, to the then foreign minister, Stephen Smith.
Mr Smith's deputy chief of staff, Andrew Dempster, told the US the week before that Australia could accept Japan's continuing the hunt if it cut the number of whales killed in the Southern Ocean.
Australia's dispute with Japan has grown in the past year but in its joint announcement with New Zealand last month over pursuing Japan in the international court, the prospect of further negotiations appeared to remain. The NZ Foreign Minister, Murray McCully, said there would be a ''focus on new diplomatic and communications strategies to try to persuade Japan to end [the] whaling''.
Meanwhile, the 4500-tonne Ocean Protector was tied up in Fremantle yesterday and is not due to leave port for a fortnight.
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