Japan, Norway defy IWC whaling moratorium

From ANIMAL PEOPLE, April 2002:

TOKYO–With just a month left before the International
Whaling Commission is to meet in the Japanese whaling village of
Shimonoseki to decide whether to continue the 1986 global moratorium
on commercial whaling, Norway and Japan are racheting up the
pressure to end it through a series of gestures of defiance.
Many moratorium defenders fear that if Japan and Norway
decide to completely ignore it, the regulatory authority of the IWC
will collapse.

On February 13, Norwegian fisheries minister Svein Ludwigsen
raised the Norwegian coastal whaling quota of minke whales from 549
to a record 674. Nine days later, Japan told the IWC that it plans
to kill 150 minke whales kills in the North Pacific for “research”
this year, up from 100, and will also kill 50 endangered sei whales.
Japan will also again kill 440 minke whales within the
Southern Oceans Whale Sanctuary declared by the IWC in 1994.
On March 6, the Japan Fisheries Agency announced that it
would import 100 tons of whale meat from Norway, as a gesture of
solidarity among whaling nations.