Japan has won a symbolic battle in its campaign to restart commercial whaling.

Backed by other pro-whaling nations, Japan forced the International Whaling Commission to declare officially that a 20-year old moratorium on commercial whaling was "no longer necessary".

The declaration, passed by a vote of 33 to 32 amid jeering and finger-pointing from conservationist nations, changes the tone of future IWC meetings.

But victory in Japan’s longer campaign to undo the ban on commercial whaling may yet be a long way off. The declaration does not immediately affect the IWC’s 1986 moratorium, because the commission’s rules require a three-quarters majority for that to be overturned.

However, the vote marks a significant propaganda triumph, and is a sign that Japanese muscle on the IWC is growing. Tokyo delegates will end the five-day IWC meeting on the Caribbean island of St Kitts and Nevis tomorrow with nothing practical to show for their efforts but a good foothold from which to mount a future challenge on the moratorium.

The declaration is non-binding, and Japan’s rising sway over IWC members did not produce victories in the meeting’s more contentious votes. But IWC insiders are concerned that Tokyo has finally proved that it can mobilise IWC voters — many of whom are tiny, in some cases land-locked, nations.

Chris Carter, New Zealand’s Conservation Minister, said that the vote would work against Japan by exposing to the world how the IWC worked and how some members were merely pawns in Japan’s "long, expensive campaign to achieve a whaling majority".

Japan’s influence over the IWC voting process has been increasing for many years as it has encouraged and allegedly given financial support to a stream of small countries joining as new members. Yesterday’s divisive motion was passed by a single vote, and was roundly decried by the environmental lobby as a victory of backroom manoeuvres and chequebook diplomacy.

The IWC also now officially holds that pro-environmental groups and non-governmental organisations represent a threat and that whales are to blame for diminishing fish stocks in parts of the world’s oceans — a line condemned by one biologist as "like blaming woodpeckers for deforestation".

Unlike Norway, Japan has adhered to the 1986 moratorium on whaling, but retains the right to hunt an annual quota of minke whales in the name of scientific research. The great majority of that catch, though, ends up on the dinner-tables and restaurants of Japan.

Along with a small handful of strongly pro-whaling nations such as Russia and Norway, Japan can now begin to shape the IWC, curbing its power as a force for conservation and perhaps re-establishing the organisation as an industrial regulator.

Shoichi Nakawaga, Japan’s Minister of Agriculture, Food and Fisheries, said that the declaration was the only way to protect the IWC from collapse. "This vote proves that more nations showed their support for normalising the IWC as an agency for managing whale-related resources," the minister said.

Although the 1986 moratorium needs 75 per cent of the vote to be overturned, important procedural features of the IWC could be changed by a simple majority. These would include making IWC votes into secret ballots and banning the oversight of groups like Greenpeace. The anti-whaling lobby fears that with those changes in place, Japan and its allies could soon approach the three-quarters majority it needs.

But the latest meeting has, according to Japan’s opponents, clearly shown that there are limits to how much support Japan can buy or strong-arm. Tokyo has unsuccessfully proposed similar declarations in most years, and had three proposals voted down in the latest meeting. On Friday it lost by 32 to 30 a vote that would have removed dolphins from the IWC agenda; later that day, Japan lost by 33 to 30 a vote on the introduction of secret ballots. On Saturday, Japan failed to pass a motion that would have designated four parts of Japan as areas where commercial hunting of minke whales was culturally acceptable.

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