Stormy whale forecast

I'm in London for the rest of the week, at the meeting on the future of the International Whaling Commission.

It was supposed to be a quiet solution-seeking meeting, and we tried to help build a favorable environment with the Pew symposium we organized in Tokyo at the end of January.

But in the last few days, some of the players on both sides of the whaling equasion have not be very helpful.

At one extreme, the Japanese Government has reactivated its "vote consolidation diplomacy" which consists in "subsidizing" small countries' IWC membership.

At the other extreme, the Sea Sheperd -- an organization whose core activity consists in mounting stunts at sea against whalers with no regard [contrary to Greenpeace] for the political context -- has just hitted the news again.

We posted last week Chez Rémi the links to all the documents prepared and submitted for this week's IWC meeting. Since, the Australian Government has also published its contribution on the website of its Department of Environment, Water, Heritage and the Arts.

Many of the countries Japan has targetted in its vote consolidation campaign are francophone. In order to give them a chance to hear a different soundbite, we've just published the French translation of the Pew Tokyo Chairman Summary.