MercoPress. South Atlantic News Agency

Japan Counts Caribbean Nations As Allies.

Caribbean nations have lined up behind Japan in its bid to reverse an International Whaling Commission ban on commercial whaling; drawing renewed claims from environmentalist groups they are selling their votes for new fisheries and other Japanese-funded projects.

Japan has been dogged by the allegations for years and vehemently denies them. But it has long built piers and fish markets in pro-whaling countries from Antigua to Dominica.

According to the commission's voting system, these tiny, often poor countries have as much power as larger countries such as France and the United States. Environmentalists cried foul Monday when all six Caribbean members of the commission sided with Japan in a failed bid to hold voting by secret ballot at the annual meeting underway in Sorrento, Italy.

"It's very, very striking the consistency with which some of the main Caribbean countries are voting with Japan," said Patrick Ramage, a spokesman for the U.S.-based International Fund for Animal Welfare.

The commission meeting will end Thursday. So far, it has been dominated by Japan's efforts to overturn the 1986 ban.

In recent years, Caribbean countries backed Japan on the vast majority of whaling votes ? a trend that is expected to continue.

"I don't think our position would have changed because we have been beneficiaries of the Japanese aid," said Erasmus Williams, a government spokesman for St. Kitts and Nevis.

He said whaling votes don't come "in exchange" for aid, but that "we continue to provide assistance to our friendly countries."

Japan has given generously to St. Kitts, funding a $7.7 million fishing complex that opened last year. Williams said the new complex creates new jobs in an economy traditionally based on tourism and a fading sugar industry, and three more of the facilities are planned.

"We definitely have to find ways of providing for our people and developing our country," Williams said.

As for Japan's help, "we assist each other in pursuing ... legitimate international goals," he said.

In Dominica, where tourists go to watch humpback whales, the environment minister resigned in 2000 to protest policies he said were bought with Japanese aid.

"We were promoting Dominica as the whale-watching capital of the Caribbean, and we were promoting killing whales," said the former minister, Atherton Martin, a hotelier and president of the Caribbean Conservation Association.

"If we are for sale, then it sends a message," he said. "As small as we are, we are a nation, and our word has to stand for something."

Martin said he fears Dominica will remain pro-whaling. "There's every indication they'll be even more vigorous in their support of the Japanese because this year they're building a new fishing complex. That's how they buy votes."

Japan says aid isn't linked to recipients' policies. In a statement, Japan said it has "fisheries relationships" with many nations and that "when we have a chance to discuss the IWC situation with those nations, they are often more prepared to understand our position."

Other Caribbean members on the whaling commission include Antigua and Barbuda, Grenada, St. Lucia, and St. Vincent and the Grenadines.

Japan, the world's prime consumer of whale meat, has proposed hunting nearly 3,000 minke whales a year in the Antarctic. Like Iceland, Japan hunts whales under a program allowing for research, but it wants to resume commercial whaling and promises to do so in a sustainable way.

Greenpeace lists Suriname, on South America's north coast, among new pro-whaling nations. It voted for the secret ballot initiative, which was rejected 29-24.

St. Vincent, also a recipient of Japanese aid, is the only Caribbean country allowed to hunt whales. Its yearly quota was increased from two to four whales in 2002, and a small group of hunters carry on the tradition off the small island of Bequia.