Whale hunt

Australian Prime Minister Julia Gillard said she was "very disappointed" by the South Korea's proposal submitted to meeting of the International Whaling Commission (IWC) in Panama.

"We are completely opposed to whaling. There is no excuse for scientific whaling," she said.

New Zealand Foreign Minister Murray McCully said the "so-called scientific program" conducted by Japan had long been recognized as commercial whaling in "drag."

The IWC passed a moratorium on whaling in 1986 but permitted catches for research, with the meat then sold to consumers. Japan has long used this loophole.

Lobby groups vocal

Former Australian environment minister Ian Campbell, who is an advisory board member of the ocean conservation group Sea Shepherd, said campaigners would "have to go out to the oceans and save the whales off South Korea."

Anti-whaling activists, such as Sea Shepherd, regularly harass Japanese whaling ships during their annual hunts in the Southern Ocean off Australia and Antarctica.

The environmental group Greenpeace said its bureau in Seoul had been flooded by phone calls from campaigners abroad, adding that it had been "taken by surprise" by the Korean government's proposal.

Korea's own Federation for Environment Movement (KFEM) urged the government to withdraw its plan, saying the fisheries ministry should be stripped of its powers to decide on whaling.

The ministry considered all whales "not as endangered mammals but as fish to be captured," said KFEM.

The World Wildlife fund said minke whales which South Korea wants to hunt are considered an endangered species.

Greenpeace also disputed South Korea's claim that the minke population had recovered, adding that any Korea's hunting plan still had to be submitted to the IWC's scientific committee.

Catch "historical," says South Korea

South Korea's envoy to the IWC Panama meeting said Korean consumption of whale meat "dates back to historical times." He claimed the minke whale population had recovered since the 1986 moratorium.

Whalemeat is popular around the Korean coastal city of Ulsan from whales said to have been accidentally pulled from the water as "bycatch" caught in fishing nets.

A Korean fisheries researcher Sohn Hawsun said some 100 whales, most of them minke, are netted every year in South Korean waters.

ipj/mz (afpe, Reuters)