Japan and Norway failed Wednesday to win enough support for limited resumption of commercial whaling after antiwhaling countries at the International Whaling Commission blocked Japan's resolution for the IWC to lift parts of a ban.
Japan's delegation accepted "with regret" the lack of consensus at plenary talks and agreed to shelve the proposal until the IWC meeting next year.
But the deputy head of Japan's delegation, Masayuki Komatsu, Japan's assistant IWC commissioner, accused antiwhaling countries like the United States, Britain and New Zealand of deliberately delaying discussions on the issue, which is being tackled under the topic of the Revised Management Scheme.
The RMS is a set of scientific and legal guidelines to govern commercial whaling, including new catch limits. Work on the RMS, which is seen as replacing the moratorium on commercial whaling imposed by IWC in 1982, has been delayed for years.