SPAIN SUPPORTIVE OF U.S. INTERNATIONAL WHALING

UNCLAS MADRID 000848 SIPDIS SIPDIS DEPARTMENT FOR OES/OA (JOHN FIELD) AND EUR/WE; USDOC FOR NMFS (CHERI MCCARTY) E.O. 12958: N/A TAGS: SENV EFIS KSCA PREL IWC ETRD SP SUBJECT: SPAIN SUPPORTIVE OF U.S. INTERNATIONAL WHALING COMMISSION (IWC) PRIORITIES REF: STATE 56397 ¶1. ESTHOFF made reftel points May 8 to Spanish IWC Commissioner Carmen Asencio, urging Spain to support U.S. IWC priorities. Asencio said Spain would endorse the aboriginal subsistence whaling quota for Bering-Chukchi-Beaufort Sea bowhead whales and agreed with the U.S. positions on the Revised Management Scheme and the mandate of the Conservation Committee. ¶2. Asencio said she feared that Japan's linkage of the U.S./Russian bowhead whale quota to Tokyo's request for a coastal whaling quota would paralyze the 2007 IWC meeting as it did in 2002, the last time a bowhead quota was considered. She said she had been demarched by a Japanese Embassy official, but that Tokyo's approach had not changed Spain's views. She also said that a New Zealand Embassy official had visited her and indicated that Wellington believed that the bowhead quota had the support of at least three quarters of the IWC member states and would thus be approved. Aguirre