Tuna ban 'in the air' as Japan adopts 'scare tactics

Japan was accused of scare tactics at world talks on wildlife protection today as it campaigned against a proposal to curb trade in bluefin tuna, the succulent sushi delicacy.

Malta earlier this month was the only country to vote against an EU decision to back calls for the ban.

The 175-nation Convention on International Trade in Endangered Species (CITES), meeting until March 25, is gearing up to vote on banning commerce in bluefin from the Mediterranean and eastern Atlantic, a motion that requires a two-thirds majority to pass.

"It is very much up in the air. There's a lot of jockeying," said Patrick Van Klaveren of Monaco, which is leading the charge.

"Japan's lobbying is formidable. Three or four people from the Japanese delegation are constantly crisscrossing the Convention, arranging meetings," he told AFP.

"They are targeting developing countries, scaring them about what could happen to their (own tuna) stocks, along the lines of 'your turn will come'," he said.

Monaco's proposal to list Atlantic bluefin on CITES' Appendix I, backed by the United States and the European Union, would not affect bluefin caught in the Pacific.

Even so, "the Pacific island nations and Asia are also quite sensitive" to Japan's arguments, Van Klaveren added.

Tokyo vowed last week to fight the moratorium, saying it would ignore any such measure voted into place by taking a "reservation".

"Japan will claim its unchanging position that [the solution is] resource control," not a ban, government spokesman Hirofumi Hirano said.

Tunisia, with major bluefin fisheries in the Mediterranean, is also working the halls in Doha, hoping to muster the support of Arab nations against the proposal, Van Klaveren said.

He voiced regret that the EU had not taken a stronger stand.

The 27-nation bloc favours the ban amid mounting evidence that stocks of the precious fish -- which sells for more than 100,000 dollars a head in Japan -- have crashed over the past 30 years.

But it has asked for implementation to be postponed until a November meeting of ICAAT, the inter-governmental fishery group that manages tuna stocks in the Atlantic and adjacent seas.

"The EU is not very active. It is absorbed by its own internal negotiations," Van Klaveren complained.

Malta is the biggest exporter of tuna in the EU.

The CITES secretariat, which makes recommendations on proposals before the Convention, declared on Saturday that bluefin tuna fisheries in the two sea zones were in crisis and met the criteria for a total ban on international trade.

The issue will be debated on Thursday, although the vote is unlikely to take place before next week, officials said.

Japan has argued that tuna fishing should be regulated through quotas, such as those set by the Indian Ocean Tuna Commission and the Western and Central Pacific Fisheries Commission.

"Japan has accepted cuts in its quota for the catches. It's unfair to introduce a trade ban," Tadao Ban, president of the tuna traders' association at Tsukiji market in Tokyo, said last week.

Environmentalists argue that quota limits have been systematically exceeded as high-tech fishing fleets -- using spotter aircraft and giant freezer ships -- have reduced East Atlantic and Mediterranean bluefin stocks by 80 percent.