The International Whaling Commission will weigh a partial lifting of a longstanding moratorium on commercial whale hunting when it meets next week in Santiago, Chile.

The proposal is aimed at settling a dispute that pits three whaling nations -- Japan, Iceland and Norway -- against the United States, most of Europe and a South American bloc, which favor an indefinite expansion of the ban and tighter overall fisheries protection.

The pro-whaling nations are supported by developing countries that Japan has recruited into the commission and promised foreign aid in exchange for votes. But neither side is close to the three-quarters majority necessary to make major changes.

Championing a compromise solution is the commission chairman, William Hogarth, who leads the U.S. delegation and is a former director of the National Marine Fisheries Service.

Hogarth said the long, bitter fight over the ban has blocked progress on whale conservation and made the commission irrelevant. He sees the Santiago meeting as the start of negotiations on reaching a compromise -- not an opportunity to settle the matter.

"We should not vote on anything until we agree on everything," Hogarth said.

While Hogarth has not provided specifics, a compromise would likely exchange greater protection for whales for partial approval of limited commercial whaling with strict quotas.

Advocacy groups say Hogarth's broad proposal is outrageous. "Whales face more threats today than at any point in their history from pollution of habitat, collisions with high-speed vessels, ocean noise pollution and the looming threat of global warming," said Patrick Ramage, whale program director for the International Fund for Animal Welfare. "The last thing we should be considering is a resumption of commercial whaling."

But Hogarth said a compromise would benefit whales, allowing the commission to meaningfully regulate whaling and decrease the total number of whales killed.
Moratorium problems
The moratorium, Hogarth said, is not working. Iceland and Norway engage in commercial whaling, but by far the largest and most adamant whaler is Japan, whose ships have killed more than 14,000 whales since the moratorium was adopted in 1986.

The Japanese delegation argues that its whaling does not violate the commercial moratorium because it is classified by the international body as "special permit" or "scientific" whaling.

But there is scientific consensus that research could be conducted through non-lethal measures.

Japan's claims were further injured in February when it was discovered that workers on the scientific vessels were given whale meat to sell. In 2006, Japan announced plans to take endangered humpback whales but later suspended them in the face of international outrage.

Despite many International Whaling Commission (IWC) resolutions condemning Japan's whaling, its program continues to grow. And it will continue to do so until there is compromise at the commission, according to Rep. Don Young (R-Alaska).

"The IWC is a broken body," said Young, noting that more than 37,000 whales have been intentionally killed since the moratorium was adopted. "If the IWC cannot come to some agreement on how to go forward, Norway, Iceland and Japan have all signaled in recent years that they want to take more whales, or more species of whales, and under the current rules they can do so."

Hogarth said a compromise with Japan, as well as building consensus for expanded conservation measures, could reduce the number of whales killed by setting quotas beneath what is currently taken.

"I don't understand how anyone could be against a plan that reduces the number of whales killed," he told a House panel at a June 9 hearing.

Hogarth's delicate position

Hogarth's role as commission chairman and compromise broker has muted his ability as head of the U.S. delegation to push for conservation, Ramage said.

That position is further complicated by pressure from Congress to protect subsistence whaling permits for Alaskan natives, whose permission to take a few whales every year for their own consumption must be renewed by the IWC every five years. At the 2002 meeting in Shimonoseke, Japan, the Japanese delegation blocked the Alaskan quota, and a special meeting had to be called to pass it.

"Every year, the U.S. delegation is delivered bound and gagged to the convention floor," said Ramage, who has attended 10 of the past 12 conventions. "The message they get from Congress is, 'Good luck, do something good for whales, but whatever you do, don't mess up our native quota.'"

This year appears to be more of the the same.

On Wednesday, the House approved H.R. 350 ,which directed the U.S. delegation to support a continued moratorium, despite a last-minute objection from Young, who said it could threaten the native quota.

"This resolution does nothing to save the whales; in fact, it might do the opposite," Young said. "Alaska's quota cannot be held hostage for other countries' political whims. The U.S. needs to be very careful what it says about whaling because it is a whaling nation."

Emerging Buenos Aires bloc

At the 2006 commission meeting in St. Kitts and Nevis, the host nation introduced a nonbinding resolution that called for the legalization of whaling and blamed overpopulation of whales for collapsing fish stocks worldwide.

The measure passed by simple majority, and while it did not make any rule changes, it did serve notice to pro-moratorium nations that commission politics were tilting against them.

"St. Kitts, along with Japan's announcement that it was going to go after humpbacks, was a wake-up call that the conservation majority was in danger at the forum," Ramage said.

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The Buenos Aires group, whose member states earn revenue through ecotourism, favors new marine sanctuaries in its in southern international waters.

The Buenos Aires bloc and other countries want to nudge the IWC toward a whale conservation forum whose purview extends beyond whaling to the full gamut of threats whales face, many of which didn't exist when the commission was established in 1946.

Countries are also more interested in protecting whales as a resource, as whale watching becomes a popular and lucrative component of ecotourism.

"What we see when we step outside this antiquated body that nobody has ever heard of, we see a global move toward whale conservation," Ramage said. "Country after country has put down the harpoon and picked up the camera."

Softer approach by Japan

This year's Japanese delegation may be especially amenable to compromise, some observers say.

In early July, Japan will host the Group of Eight summit, where climate change is among several key issues on the table. Playing the role of rogue whaler during the IWC convention could damage Japan's hopes of establishing itself as a world leader in environmental matters.

There are signs that Japan is taking a softer approach to the IWC.

During the past decade, Japan has repeatedly introduced a proposal to create a new category called "cultural, community-based, or small-type whaling," which would allow coastal communities to kill whales and sell their meat without violating the commercial whaling moratorium. Japan insists the category would recognize cultural ties to whaling and invigorate struggling economies, but conservation advocates call it yet another attempt by Japan to circumvent IWC regulations.

This year, the Japan delegation has vowed it would not introduce the proposal "as a sign of good faith."