Japan regrets UN whaling decision

Japan is disappointed and regrets" that the UN court ruled that Japan''''s Antarctic whale hunting is not for scientific purposes and ordered the whaling to stop, Chief Cabinet Secretary Yoshihide Suga said in a statement. "However, Japan will abide by the judgment of the court as a state that places a great importance on the international legal order and the rule of law as a basis of the international community," the top government said. Earlier in the day, a 16-judge panel at the International Court of Justice in The Hague, Netherlands, delivered its judgment in the case, supporting Australia''''s claim that Japan''''s whaling program is conducted for commercial purposes rather than scientific research. "We will consider our concrete future course of actions carefully, upon studying what is stated in the judgment," Suga said. Tokyo stopped commercial whaling in line with a 1986 International Whaling Commission moratorium, but has hunted whales annually in the Southern Ocean around Antarctica since 1987 for what it calls scientific research purposes, claiming the program is consistent with Article VIII of the 1946 International Convention for the Regulation of Whaling that permits research whaling. Australia filed the case with the court in 2010 to stop Japan''''s whaling activities.