Saturday March 13 12:37 AM ET

Iceland Parliament Votes To Resume Whaling

By Jonathan Lynn

STOCKHOLM, Sweden (Reuters) - Iceland's parliament has voted to end a 10-year ban on whaling and asked the government to prepare for a resumption by next year, a senior official said Friday.

The parliamentary resolution, passed Wednesday, is certain to outrage environmentalists, but underlines the fiercely independent North Atlantic island's determination to fish the seas as it sees fit.

``Parliament gave the green light for the resumption of whaling in Iceland,'' the government official, who asked not to be named, said by telephone from Reykjavik.

The resolution urges a resumption of whaling as soon as possible, upholds Iceland's sovereign right to harvest its resources, calls on the government to implement the decision, and assumes whaling will start no later than 2000.

Support for the resolution cut across party lines.

Although the booming economy has diversified in recent years, fishing still accounts for 75-80 percent of exports.

Whaling is also a traditional way of life, and was important commercially, accounting for two percent of exports at its peak.

The International Whaling Commission (IWC) decided in 1982 to ban whaling amid concern that many whale species were endangered. Whaling stopped from 1985, although Iceland continued until 1989 to take some whales for scientific purposes.

Iceland went along with the ban because it was thought to be temporary, but left the IWC in 1992.

Whale stocks are now growing and, according to some Icelanders, threatening the fish stocks on which the island depends. Some species, such as the minke whale, are not threatened with extinction, they say.

``These stocks we're talking about are not endangered but are listed for political reasons,'' the official said.

Iceland, with a population of only 275,000, is too small to absorb many whales, so much of the whale meat taken after the ban is lifted would be exported. Until the ban, Iceland was catching an average 236 fin whales, 200 minke whales and 70 sei whales a year, according to official documents.

Iceland feels it is free to trade in whale meat because it is no longer a member of the IWC, and is not a signatory to the Convention on International Trade in Endangered Species (CITES).

Norway resumed whaling in 1993, although it does not allow international trade in whale meat, and is campaigning for minke whales to be removed from CITES.

Opponents of whaling fear a resumption could hurt Iceland's tourist industry, where whale-watching is a growing sector. It was boosted by the return last year of Keiko, the killer whale which starred in the film ``Free Willy.''

It could also lead to calls for a consumer boycott of Icelandic goods in other countries, especially fish products.