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."
Asian perspectives of the US have shifted from a country once perceived as a force of “moral legitimacy” to something akin to “a landlord seeking rent,” Singaporean Minister for Defence Ng Eng Hen (黃永宏) said on the sidelines of an international security meeting. Ng said in a round-table discussion at the Munich Security Conference in Germany that assumptions undertaken in the years after the end of World War II have fundamentally changed. One example is that from the time of former US president John F. Kennedy’s inaugural address more than 60 years ago, the image of the US was of a country
BLIND COST CUTTING: A DOGE push to lay off 2,000 energy department workers resulted in hundreds of staff at a nuclear security agency being fired — then ‘unfired’ US President Donald Trump’s administration has halted the firings of hundreds of federal employees who were tasked with working on the nation’s nuclear weapons programs, in an about-face that has left workers confused and experts cautioning that the Department of Government Efficiency’s (DOGE’s) blind cost cutting would put communities at risk. Three US officials who spoke to The Associated Press said up to 350 employees at the National Nuclear Security Administration (NNSA) were abruptly laid off late on Thursday, with some losing access to e-mail before they’d learned they were fired, only to try to enter their offices on Friday morning
STEADFAST DART: The six-week exercise, which involves about 10,000 troops from nine nations, focuses on rapid deployment scenarios and multidomain operations NATO is testing its ability to rapidly deploy across eastern Europe — without direct US assistance — as Washington shifts its approach toward European defense and the war in Ukraine. The six-week Steadfast Dart 2025 exercises across Bulgaria, Romania and Greece are taking place as Russia’s invasion of Ukraine approaches the three-year mark. They involve about 10,000 troops from nine nations and represent the largest NATO operation planned this year. The US absence from the exercises comes as European nations scramble to build greater military self-sufficiency over their concerns about the commitment of US President Donald Trump’s administration to common defense and
Cook Islands officials yesterday said they had discussed seabed minerals research with China as the small Pacific island mulls deep-sea mining of its waters. The self-governing country of 17,000 people — a former colony of close partner New Zealand — has licensed three companies to explore the seabed for nodules rich in metals such as nickel and cobalt, which are used in electric vehicle (EV) batteries. Despite issuing the five-year exploration licenses in 2022, the Cook Islands government said it would not decide whether to harvest the potato-sized nodules until it has assessed environmental and other impacts. Cook Islands Prime Minister Mark Brown
RSS