Kristjan Loftsson, Iceland's millionaire whaling king, doesn't really see the difference: "whales are just another fish," he said at a crunch meeting of the International Whaling Commission.

The IWC has gathered in Agadir, Morocco in a bid to end - or at least suspend - the trench war between pro- and anti-whaling nations.

As things stand, Iceland, Japan and Norway use legal loopholes to harvest the marine mammals despite a 1986 moratorium on commercial whaling.

A proposal drafted before the meeting would have authorised a reduced hunt by these three countries for a decade while the 88-nation body tries to work out a more durable solution.

But on Wednesday the talks collapsed, which suits Mr Loftsson just fine.

"It is all a waste of time and money," said the 67-year-old, who has been tracking and killing fin whales for more than four decades and is now a member of Iceland's delegation.

"The debate here is all about creating unemployment," he said in an interview.

"Iceland is a small country. If you compare the figure with the population in America, it would have an impact of cutting 15,000 jobs."

"The worst are the US and especially the EU," he said, making it clear that he hopes his country's bid to join the EU fails.

"Those who want us to stop whaling killed 64,000 blue whales between 1933 and 66, and 105,000 fin whales in the Southern Ocean. The most vocal are the ones with a guilty conscience."

Mr Loftsson is untouched by a wave of recent research showing that cetaceans - the order grouping whales, dolphins and porpoises - are closer to humans that once thought in their ability to communicate, recognising themselves in a mirror, and create what anthropologists would call culture.