Japanese whaling sparks cry for U.S. sanctions

Press, 23 September 1987, Page 4

Japanese whaling sparks cry for U.S. sanctions

NZPA-Reuter Washington By SUE BAKER The World Wildlife Fund (W.W.F.) in America has urged the Reagan Administration to bar Japanese fish imports it Japan refuses to stop killing whales. “We are asking President Reagan to announce his commitment to sanctions as soon as possible — before Japan’s (whaling) fleet leaves for Antarctica in October,”

William Reilly, president of the United States branch of the Swiss-based international conservation organisation, told a news conference. Reilly urged the Administration to bar imports of Japanese fish and fish products, worth about SUSS6S million ($943 million) last year, and cut in half Japan’s fish quota in U.S. waters, a move he said would cost Japan “tens of millions of dollars.”

Japan, which has joined a five-year ban on commercial whaling under international pressure, announced in April it would kill 875 whales between October and next March for what it called research purposes. But Roger Payne, a W.W.F. research scientist, said the so-called “scientific whaling” planned by Japan was a “scam.” “It’s just the same activity under a different

name ... this is a scam plain and simple,” Payne told the news conference. “The Japanese know it and we know it” The International Whaling Commission (1.W.C.), a London-based group of 42 nations set up four decades ago to regulate whaling, imposed the fiveyear commercial whaling ban in 1985 and earlier this year closed a loophole that had permitted killing of whales for research.