Okada to make weekend visit to Australia for talks including whaling

TOKYO, Feb. 16 Kyodo -
Japanese Foreign Minister Katsuya Okada said Tuesday that he will visit
Australia this weekend to hold talks with his Australian counterpart and other
officials on issues including whaling, nuclear disarmament and climate change.
The visit on Saturday and Sunday will take place amid an intensifying
antiwhaling campaign by the U.S.-based Sea Shepherd Conservation Society, to
which Australia has offered port facilities.
Okada said that he believes the issue of whaling will be discussed during a
series of meetings in Australia, given that Australia ''has various opinions''
about Japan's so-called ''research whaling.''
Australia is one of a number of countries that strongly oppose Japan's whaling
activities in the Antarctic Sea.
Okada said he is making arrangements to meet with Australian Prime Minister
Kevin Rudd, Foreign Minister Stephen Smith and Defense Minister John Faulkner.
Okada will leave Japan on Friday night and return early Monday.
Japan halted commercial whaling in 1986 in line with an international
moratorium, but has been hunting whales since 1987 for what it calls scientific
research purposes. Environmentalists condemn the activity as a cover for
commercial whaling.
Sea Shepherd has stepped up its efforts to obstruct Japan's whaling activities,
with an activist from New Zealand secretly boarding a patrol boat belonging to
Japan's whaling fleet on Monday to lodge a protest. The activist has been
detained on the vessel.
The Japanese government plans to bring the activist, Pete Bethune, to Japan for
questioning over his alleged intrusion on the Japanese vessel.
==Kyodo