TOKYO (AFP) — Australia's foreign minister warned Friday of tougher action to stop Japan whaling, despite calls for calm from both sides over the increasingly emotive dispute.
Foreign Minister Stephen Smith held talks in Tokyo just as Japan was reported to have resumed killing whales in the Antarctic Ocean following a two-week halt under pressure from environmental protesters.
Smith, visiting Tokyo for two days starting Thursday on his first trip since Prime Minister Kevin Rudd's left-leaning government took office in December, warned of potential legal action to stop Japan's Antarctic hunt.
"Australia very strongly believes that Japan should cease whaling in the Southern Ocean," he told a news conference.
Rudd's government has ramped up pressure by sending a customs ship to monitor the hunt. Smith said Australia was also considering appointing a diplomatic envoy to press its case.
"We are giving very careful consideration to the possibility of taking international legal action in respect of this matter," he added.
But Smith, who met Prime Minister Yasuo Fukuda earlier Friday, said the row should not hurt the long-standing alliance between Australia and Japan.
"Whereas we have a strong disagreement, this is not an issue which in my view is or can or will adversely impact upon the fundamentals about the partnership with Japan," he said.
Fukuda called for calm over the dispute.
"The whaling issue is a matter of each country's circumstances," Fukuda told reporters after the meeting. "It's important to address the whaling issue in a calm manner."
Japan aims to slaughter about 1,000 whales this year in Antarctic waters despite strong opposition from Western countries led by Australia and environmental groups who revere the giant mammals.
Tokyo argues that whaling is part of its culture and accuses Western nations of cultural insensitivity. It uses a loophole in a 1986 global whaling moratorium that allows lethal research.
Australian media reports said Friday that the customs ship took footage of the Japanese killing five whales, resuming the hunt some two weeks after it was halted by protesters.
Activists from the Sea Shepherd Conservation Society in mid-January climbed aboard the Japanese harpoon ship to deliver a protest, setting off a two-day standoff.
The stark difference in opinion has turned the annual meetings of the International Whaling Commission (IWC) into intense confrontations, with Japan repeatedly threatening to walk out.
In a bid to break the deadlock, the Pew Charitable Trusts, a US-based non-governmental group, arranged two days of closed-door talks this week in Tokyo involving nearly 100 people from both sides of the issue.
"We concluded that an internationally accepted solution is preferable, although we all question whether a political will exists," said the symposium's chairman, Tuiloma Neroni Slade, a former judge at the International Criminal Court and Samoan ambassador to the United Nations.
Saying he was offering his personal view, Slade recommended a compromise under which Western nations acknowledge Japanese coastal communities' right to whaling but Tokyo suspends "research whaling" in the Southern Ocean.
Joji Morishita, the director for international negotiations at Japan's Fisheries Agency, was tight-lipped on any compromise.
"All I can say is that we are prepared to talk about options with an open mind so as we can have true negotiations and true dialogue," Morishita said.
But Greenpeace Japan's executive director, Jun Hoshikawa, said the true battle lay in Japan, where few people eat whale despite the adamant position of the government.
"The whaling issue has had a sad history of being framed as a battle between Japanese people versus outsiders. That's not true," he said.
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