SYDNEY -- Once again Japanese whale-meat eaters have outwitted the world's whale lovers. Though those diners need not raise too many self-congratulatory cups of sake. Within a year or two the Tokyo whale restaurant tables could be overturned.
The antiwhaling nations, narrowly defeated in their bid to halt Japan's "scientific research" whaling, are preparing to harpoon the pro-Japan consortium before the next meeting of the International Whaling Commission in July 2001.
"Client states of Japanese largess," as critics dub a whaling-sympathetic bloc of voting countries, effectively sank the antiwhaling majority of nations at last week's IWC meeting in Adelaide, South Australia. The vote only just missed the three-quarters majority needed to curtail commercial whaling. And the antiwhalers are jubilant that at least one of the prowhaler members looks about to jump ship.