MercoPress. South Atlantic News Agency

The whales Won!

The International Whaling Commission resoundingly rejected a proposal yesterday to end its almost two-decade-old ban on commercial whaling, dealing a blow to Japan and other pro-whaling nations that say stocks of some species have recovered enough to allow limited hunts.

Commission members voted 29-23 against the Japanese plan for regulated sustainable whaling, which needed a three-fourths majority to pass.

The 66-member commission banned commercial hunts in 1986, handing environmentalists a major victory in protecting species that were near extinction after centuries of whaling depleted populations.

Norway holds the world's only commercial whaling season in defiance of the ban. Commission rules allow members to reject decisions they oppose. Japan hunts whales for what it calls scientific research. In all, whaling nations are expected to kill more than 1,550 of the mammals this year.

??The whales won,'' Patrick R. Ramage of the US-based International Fund for Animal Welfare said after the vote. ??The Japanese proposal was firmly defeated by a significant number of members.''

Anti-whaling countries welcomed the result.

New Zealand Minister of Conservation Chris Carter said his country was ??absolutely delighted'' with the vote. ??This has been a very serious loss of face for Japan,'' he said.

Some lawmakers in Japan's ruling Liberal Democratic Party are becoming frustrated and have said Japan should withdraw from the commission.

??We have to consider it now,'' said Joji Morishita, Japan's chief international negotiator on whaling issues.

On Monday, Japan announced it would more than double its annual kill of minke whales, a smaller non-endangered species, to as many as 935 from 440 this year under the research whaling programme it began in 1987. Critics call it commercial whaling in disguise.

Japan says it must kill whales to study them. It then sells the meat, which is allowed under commission rules.