I am writing to you to express my deep concern regarding your country's continuing whaling activities conducted under the auspices of the Institute of Cetacean Research (ICR) and the Fisheries Agency of Japan (FAJ). I regard both the 'research' whaling in the North Pacific and in the Southern Ocean Sanctuary as commercial whaling in disguise. No other nation is conducting research on whales in this way. The International Whaling Commission (IWC) has never requested these programmes and has repeatedly called on the Government of Japan to cancel them.

I was particularly shocked by the recent news that the North Pacific whaling programme is now to target sei whales as well as minkes, Bryde's and sperm whales. This species is officially classified on the IUCN red data book as endangered - a consequence of over-exploitation by Japanese whalers in the last century. It was from cutting open the stomachs of the tens of thousands of sei whales taken by these commercial whaling operations that we know exactly what these animals eat. Most of their stomach contents were copepods and krill - they eat very little fish. To justify the catch by claiming that these animals have a major impact on fisheries and so there is an urgent need to discover what these animals eat is clearly deceitful. To take sei whales is to prove that the Government of Japan shows a blatant disregard for conservation and the protection of the common inheritance of mankind.

It has also come to my attention that the Government of Japan is using overseas Development Aid (ODA) to secure pro-whaling votes in the IWC and that Mr. Masayuki Komatsu, counselor at your Fisheries Agency, has openly admitted that ODA is a major tool. Although only fisheries grant aid is used in this way, the programme brings all of Japan's ODA programme into disrepute. Atherton Martin, the Dominican Minister who resigned in protest at how his country's position in the IWC is tied to Japanese aid describes this tactic as 'coercion'. I am of the same opinion. This use of tied aid undermines the IWC and all the principles on which international conventions are founded.

Many countries, including some of those that are now most strongly opposed to whaling, must share the blame for the depletion of whale populations worldwide in the last century, but all except Japan and Norway have long since stopped whaling. Countries such as the UK, US, Australia, New Zealand and the Netherlands have all come to the realization that whaling will always lead to the depletion of whale populations and that there is no real need for it and while recognizing their own whaling histories and the place whaling holds in their culture believe that whaling has no place in the 21st century.