MercoPress. South Atlantic News Agency

Iceland rapped for resuming commercial whaling

Diplomats from twenty five countries led by Britain's ambassador delivered Wednesday a strongly-worded protest condemning Iceland over its decision to resume commercial whaling.

British Ambassador to Iceland Alp Mehmet led a group of other countries' ambassadors, including the US, Germany, and France, to Iceland's Ministry of Foreign Affairs to urge the government there to abandon the killing.

This follows last week's move by UK Fisheries Minister Ben Bradshaw who summoned Iceland's ambassador to express his grave concern over the decision to defy a worldwide ban on whaling.

Iceland announced in mid-October that it intended to resume commercial whaling, becoming only the second country after Norway to hunt the "great" ocean-going whales for openly commercial purposes since a global moratorium was imposed in 1986.

The protest-demarche signed by 25 countries including Australia, Brazil, Finland, France, Germany, Ireland, Sweden and the USA as well as the European Commission, said: "We call upon Iceland to respect the moratorium and halt its commercial whaling operations. We believe that commercial whaling quotas determined and prosecuted in the absence of any agreed management system undermines the proper functioning of the International Whaling Commission".

"We repeat our countries' opposition to this operation and urge the Government of Iceland to reconsider its position and reverse this unnecessary decision, and to abandon its current operations."

Fisheries Minister Bradshaw said: "This united action shows the depth of feeling and concern not only in Britain but all over the world about this cruel and abhorrent activity.

There is no justifiable reason to kill these whales. Today's protest leaves Iceland in no doubt about the strength of feeling against its decision to side-step an international agreement to stop the killing of whales. It has done great damage to its reputation and image. We and the many other countries that oppose the killing of whales will react in the strongest possible way to any attempt by Iceland to open trade in whale meat."

But Iceland's whaling commissioner Stefan Asmundsson said he was not too concerned.

"We have always known there are mixed opinions when it comes to whaling," he said. "Reaction has been mixed, and we have received support from nations which agree with us that utilizing whales on a sustainable basis is a reasonable thing to do".

"There have been diplomatic protests before to other nations engaged in whaling, but that has not resulted in any breakdown in diplomatic relations." Last year anti-whaling nations sent letters of protest to Norway and Japan, the countries which catch the largest numbers of whales.

The problem for the anti-whaling bloc is that on almost every other significant issue, including other environment issues, they side with Norway, Japan and Iceland, making stronger diplomatic action difficult.