"Antigua and Barbuda shares the same position with Japan for scientific monitoring and the sustainable use of whales," a government statement on Tuesday said .

The country’s Prime Minister Baldwin Spencer was heading a three-member delegation to Tokyo, which met with Japanese Foreign Minister Taro Aso on Tuesday and discussed the matter.

"We outlined that the government is fully supportive of sustainable use of the world's resources and, in that concept, we support Japan's position on whaling," Spencer is quoted as saying.

Japan is poised to control the IWC and hasten the return of commercial whaling, which has been banned internationally for the past 20 years.

Vassilli Papstovron of the International Fund for Animal Welfare (IFAW) said this will be “an environmental disaster”, adding “But the world seem unaware that it is about to happen.”

And with this possibility looming, environmentalists and animal welfare groups and activists internationally are hoping that the region’s governments will change their pro-whaling stance.

Antigua and Barbuda, St Vincent and the Grenadines, Belize, Dominica, St Kitts and Nevis and St Lucia are members of the IWC, which was set up in 1946 to provide for the proper conservation of whales and make possible the orderly development of the whaling industry.

But it is highly unlikely that Caribbean nations will vote against Japan, which has invested millions of dollars in their fishing industry.

St Vincent and the Grenadines Prime Minister, Dr Ralph Gonsalves, made some comments recently that might have betrayed the covert action of Japan to get the region to support its effort to lift the 20-year-old ban on commercial whaling.

“The Japanese want us,” Dr Gonsalves had begun to say in response to a reporter’s question at a press conference.

“The Japanese’s position -- I shouldn’t say they want us -- is that you should have the whale sanctuary,” the Prime Minister hastily amended his statement regarding what informs his country’s decisions at IWC meetings.

Dr Gonsalves' comments came even as Japan has denied being involved in “vote buying”, saying that the aid it gives to small, developing IWC nations, like those in the region, is in no way linked to their support at the IWC.

Fisherman’s Month activities in the eastern Caribbean nation of St Vincent and the Grenadines, this year, for the first time in the three decades of the event, included “Japan Day” during which Japanese Cooperation Overseas Volunteers (JOCV) conducted health check on Vincentians and exhibited samples of Japanese cuisine and culture.

Meanwhile, the International Fund for Animal Welfare is organising a two-day Non-Governmental Organization (NGO) Forum and Awareness Raising meeting slated for St Kitts in mid-June.

The St Kitts meeting is a follow up to one held in Trinidad in April, during which regional and international environmentalists called on the region to change its “strong pro-whaling position”, which they described as “inappropriate”.

Trinidad born Dr Joth Singh, IFAW’s Director of Wildlife and Habitat Protection, said the “clear recommendation” after the two-day meeting in Port-of-Spain was that the region adopts a position linked to “non-consumptive utilisation of whales”.

“A very, very clear message is coming out of the meeting which opposes the position taken by Eastern Caribbean governments in support of commercial whaling at the IWC,” he said.

Commenting on Japan’s aid to its pro-whaling allies in the region, Dr Singh said: “We need to dissociate a connection with development aid and voting and recognize that we need to start building our economies on a long-term footing rather than on issues of short-term benefits which are coming at this time -- fisheries complexes and other things.”

He continued: “The service provided by Japan is short term. The expectation is as soon as the Japanese have their way in the IWC that development aid is going to reduce significantly or be connected to other things and I think eastern Caribbean governments need to be aware of that as well.”

Britain, New Zealand and Australia have launched a diplomatic move to block Japan’s attempt to control the IWC.

“We are warning our colleagues there is a real danger that Japan could get a majority,” New Zealand’s Minister of Conservation Chris Charter said recently even as he sent a letter to other anti-whaling nations urging them to attend the St Kitts meeting.

On paper, Japan has majority support among the 66 nation members of the IWC but will need 75 percent of the votes to overturn the 1986 moratorium on commercial whaling. And, although some observers say this is unlikely, a 51 percent majority will be a huge victory for Japan and its pro-whaling counterparts, Iceland and Norway.

The majority will allow Japan to introduce secret ballots at the IWC.

At last year’s IWC meeting in Korea, Japan had, on paper, a voting majority of 33-30, with three anti-whaling members being unable to vote because they were behind in their subscription.

Four states, Belize, Togo, Mali and Gambia, believed to be in support of Japan, did not turn up to the Korea meeting and therefore the Japanese were voted down. But Japan’s leading representative at IWC meetings Akra Nakamae has vowed that this will not repeat itself at the St Kitts meeting.

“Next year, they will all participate, and the reversal of history, the turning point, is soon to come,” he said after the 2005 meeting.

St Vincent and the Grenadines, which has been whaling in the traditional way for over 100 years and which the IWC permits to kill four humpback whales annually, is the only Eastern Caribbean nation that actually hunts great whales.

Joe Simmonds, the Chief Fisheries Officer in St Kitts said science, not emotion, must influence the region’s position on the whaling issue.

Simmonds said Caribbean countries are concerned about sustainable use of marine resources and look forward to the 58th annual meeting of the IWC, even as he stressed that food security forms an important part of the debate for regional countries.

“We are saying that the decisions must be scientific and (marine resources) must be utilized in a sustainable way,” he said.

He added: “Australia is (against whaling) but they have more food security than us so we have to really look out for our food security and ensure that we look at the issue from a scientific standpoint.”

Caribbean whale watch operators at the Port-of-Spain meeting last week said that their industry has tremendous potential for growth even without the investment of additional capital.

In March, IFAW’s research vessel Song of the Whale was denied entry to at least two Caribbean countries -- Dominica and St Vincent and the Grenadines -- to conduct “non-invasive whale research”, including surveys, even as it was rumoured that a Japanese delegation was meeting with officials on the islands.

“Let me say this. St Vincent and the Grenadines, since this government has come into office (in March 2001), has a very principled position in relation to commercial whaling,” Prime Minister Dr Ralph Gonsalves said in March.

IFAW last week raised a red flag as the government of Japan announced the deployment of its whaling fleet to hunt 260 whales in the northwestern Pacific, following its killing of 863 whales earlier this year. Conservation groups around the world, including IFAW, have condemned Japan’s whaling operations as contravening international opinion and law.

In 1986, the IWC implemented a global moratorium on whale hunting. Japan continues to hunt whales arguing that the IWC permits lethal whale research. Hence, it classifies its whaling operations as “scientific” despite acknowledging that the meat and blubber from the whales it hunts are processed and sold commercially in Japan.

Experts say Japan is misinterpreting the rules. “Japan continues to snub international law and opinion by sending out its ships to kill whales,” said Dr. Joth Singh, Director of Wildlife and Habitat Protection with IFAW.

“IWC member nations must take action in St. Kitts and hold Japan responsible for its disregard of the will of the international community -- that says whales should be protected, not hunted.”

Japan has announced that in 2006 it will hunt 400 more minke whales than last year for a total of 1,070; as well as 10 fin whales, and a total of 160 endangered Bryde’s, sei, and sperm whales. This would bring the total number of whales hunted by Japan in 2006 to 1,240, the highest number since the 1986 hunting ban.