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Norway’s insistence on killing whales has finally unleashed the full
force of international disapproval – in the shape of threatened trade sanctions
by the US. Ron Brown, the US Secretary of Commerce, has told President Bill
Clinton that Norway’s decision to resume commercial whaling this year undermines
the International Whaling Commission’s attempts to conserve whales. Under
the Pelly amendment, a provision of US fishing law, Clinton can impose sanctions
against Norway for defying the terms of the IWC moratorium on whaling. He
has until early October to make a decision.

Arthur Knutsen of the Norwegian foreign ministry says the US has never
followed through its previous threats to invoke the Pelly amendment. The
first threat was made during the 1980s, when Norway decided to take whales
‘for research’, also in defiance of the IWC. Last December, after Norway
took another 95 minke whales for scientific purposes, Clinton declined to
act.

But this time the Pelly amendment is being invoked for a catch which
Norway admits is commercial. The US was among the member countries of the
IWC which signed a resolution in Kyoto earlier this year ‘regretting’ Norway’s
announcement that it would resume commercial whaling (This Week, 22 May).

Knutsen says: ‘We are breaking no international law. The hunt is legal
even within the IWC.’ Because Norway ‘reserved’ its position on the whaling
ban when it was voted on by the IWC in 1983, strictly speaking it does have
the right to ignore the ban. It set a commercial quota of 160 whales this
year, of which 158 have been taken. ‘We will catch the other two,’ says
Knutsen. Norway plans to set a new quota for next year.

Norway’s right to kill whales makes no difference to the US position.
The Pelly amendment targets any country that ‘diminishes the effectiveness
of an inter-national conservation agreement’, even when it is acting within
the letter if not the spirit of the law. The sanctions can be applied to
any product, but in whaling disputes they have been restricted to fish.
In the 1980s, the US banned imports of fish from Japan after Japan defied
the IWC moratorium.

But if the US limits its ban to fish imports, sanctions may have little
effect. The US has already cut its imports of Norwegian fish because of
a dispute over Norway’s subsidies to the salmon industry – which the US
says contravene the terms of GATT, the General Agreement on Tariffs and
Trade. In 1992 the US imported fish worth 378 million kroner ( $51.5 million),
a mere 2.6 per cent of Norway’s fish exports.

Some Norwegian companies would be hurt by an American boycott, however.
Norwegian Foods of Stavanger exports 60 per cent of its products – mostly
canned fish – to the US. It says its US subsidiary, King Oscar, has already
lost business worth $7 million because of pressure from anti-whaling groups.
The company plans to sue the Norwegian Prime Minister, Gro Harlem Brundtland,
in the American courts for damages caused by her pro-whaling policy.

Fish products account for 14 per cent of Norway’s exports, excluding
oil, says Knutsen, so threats of sanctions are ‘receiving attention’ in
Oslo. Most exports go to other European countries. John Frizell of Greenpeace
says British com-panies, which together buy nearly half of Norway’s exported
prawns, have cancelled contracts worth $3.75 million, while German importers
and retailers have cancelled contracts worth more than $30 million.

Meanwhile, Russia announced last week that Norway cannot take whales
for ‘scientific’ purposes in its waters. Norway planned to catch 27 minke
whales off its own coast this autumn, plus 10 more off the Kola Peninsula,
which juts out between the Barents and the White Seas.

So far this year Norway has caught 40 of the 99 whales it plans to catch
for research. Frizell says Norwegian whalers are reluctant to catch whales
for research, because they are supposed to take any whale they encounter
to ensure that the sampling is representative. In commercial whaling they
can select bigger, more valuable whales.