Obama Administration To Oppose Whaling

AFP: US President Barack Obama's administration has admitted it would firmly oppose whaling, delighting environmentalists ahead of a key international meeting with pro-whaling Japan.
Anti-whaling campaigners said Obama was signaling a tougher US stance leading into the meeting of the International Whaling Commission (IWC) opening Monday in Rome which is set to look at a controversial compromise proposal.
Japan hunts hundreds of whales a year in the Pacific and Antarctic using a loophole in a 1986 IWC moratorium that allows "lethal research" on the ocean giants. Norway and Iceland defy the moratorium altogether.

"The United States continues to view the commercial whaling moratorium as a necessary conservation measure and believes that lethal scientific whaling is unnecessary in modern whale conservation management," said Nancy Sutley, chair of the White House's Council on Environmental Quality.
She said the Obama administration would wait and see the proposals on the table in Rome but stressed: "It is our view that any package, to be acceptable, must result in a significant improvement in the conservation status of whales."