International Whaling Commission heading for a compromise

Delegates at the Commission's annual meeting in Chile agreed the current impasse in IWC should not continue and has adopted a reform path aimed at finding compromise between pro- and anti-hunting countries.

Governments will try to agree a package of measures by next year's IWC meeting.

To secure the agreement of whaling nations, it is likely that the essential ingredients of that package will have to include the partial resumption of commercial hunting, perhaps limited to coastal waters.

Some conservation groups approve of the endeavour because they believe it could lead to a reduction in the total number of whales killed each year, and greater regulation of hunting.

Just about the only note of discord so far in this usually fractious meeting has come over subsistence hunting in Greenland.

The Arctic state has asked to add humpback whales to its annual hunt, which already includes minkes, fins and bowheads.

Greenland is still a territory of Denmark, which speaks for it in the IWC.

But Denmark is also a member of the EU. And for the first time this year, EU states attending the IWC are supposed to agree a unified position on key issues before debates begin. At a meeting on Monday night the EU agreed to oppose the quotas. Danish delegates walked out in protest; and without EU backing, the application is almost certain to fail.