Australian Prime Minister Kevin Rudd stepped into a tense standoff between Japan and a militant anti-whaling group yesterday, calling for calm and the safe return of two activists held on a Japanese ship.
Rudd said his Foreign Minister Stephen Smith was in constant contact with the Japanese government to arrange the immediate handover of the two men, who were detained after boarding the Japanese whaling ship in Antarctic waters.
"I have concerns about the safety of all people involved with the operation," Rudd told reporters. "Therefore I would again urge restraint on the parties, full cooperation on the part of those involved to ensure the safe return of these two individuals."
Smith said Australia was ready to send a customs ship to pick up the men and end the high-seas standoff, in which the Sea Shepherd Conservation Society has refused to meet Japanese conditions for their return.
The government would use the Oceanic Viking, which is in the area, to transfer the pair back to the Sea Shepherd vessel, the Steve Irwin, if all parties cooperated, he told reporters.
"We would like the transfer to be expedited as soon as possible but people should understand it is a difficult operation," Smith said.
Japan, which says whaling is a part of its culture, uses a loophole in an international moratorium on the practice which allows "lethal research." It is on a mission to kill 1,000 whales in Antarctic waters this season.
The confrontation has forced the Japanese fleet to suspend whaling for the time being and drawn attention to efforts by activists to halt the annual hunt for good.
"The good news is that they haven't killed any whales for a week, and all the whaling activity is shut down, so we've effectively ended whaling for now," Sea Shepherd president Paul Watson said.
The two activists -- Australian Benjamin Potts, 28, and Briton Giles Lane, 35 -- were detained on Tuesday after boarding the harpoon ship Yushin Maru No. 2 to protest Japan's whaling program.
Japan yesterday welcomed the idea of Australia picking the men up.
"If concrete, Japan would greatly welcome such a move because it would be one step forward in resolving this problem," said Hideki Moronuki, the whaling chief at Japan's fisheries agency.
Moronuki accused the environmentalists of misrepresenting Japan's position, saying the whalers were not setting conditions and wanted to get rid of the protesters.
The only conditions attached to the handover were to ensure that it could be carried out safely, he said.
One of the conditions is that the Sea Shepherd ship must remain at least 10 nautical miles away from the Japanese vessel and send a small boat to pick the men up -- something Watson rejects as too dangerous.
"You must understand the reluctance of the Japanese to lash their vessel up to the Steve Irwin -- it's just not going to happen like that," said a spokesman for Japan's Institute of Cetacean Research, Glenn Inwood. "There are very serious security and safety concerns here," he said.
Inwood suggested that if the men were not picked up, they would have to remain on board for the duration of the hunt and return with the ship to Japan, where they could face charges.
Watson told Sky News he would not rule out a commando-style raid to rescue them rather than allow them to be taken to Japan.
"That would be an act of desperation but I'm not going to let them take them back to Japan and put them on trial for piracy," he said.
Watson said Japan's whaling authorities had refused to release the men until he agreed to stop disrupting the hunt, and vowed he would not bow to "terrorist" tactics.
The Sea Shepherd founder has been accused of refusing to agree to their return in order to drag out the drama for publicity purposes, but he told Australian radio he welcomed the possibility of the government picking them up.
"That is fine. We just want to get them off that boat," he said.
Australia, which is one of the strongest critics of Japanese whaling, last week sent the Oceanic Viking to the area to monitor the operation and gather evidence for a possible international legal case against the whalers.
"The key challenge is how do we bring about the end of commercial whaling, period, into the future -- that's what I'm concerned about," Rudd said. "This is not scientific whaling -- this is commercial whaling."
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