Australian town in Japanese dolphin back-flip

Fri Oct 16, 3:17 am ET

SYDNEY (AFP) – An Australian town has issued an apology to its Japanese sister city after backing down on a decision to cut ties over its slaughter of thousands of dolphins, officials said Friday.

Broome, a remote tourist town on Australia's rugged northwest coast, in August cancelled its three-decade relationship with Japan's Taiji "while the practice of harvesting dolphins exists".

But at an extraordinary meeting on October 13 it rescinded the decision which it said was made in haste and without wide consultation.

The council said it "unreservedly apologises to the Japanese community in Broome and Taiji, their families and friends for any disrespect caused by council's resolution of 22 August 2009".

"Following a delegation from local cultural groups, councillors decided that a rescission motion was in order," Broome shire president Graeme Campbell said, adding that Taiji officials had been made aware of the change.

Broome suspended its arrangement with Taiji, in Japan's Wakayama prefecture, over its commercial hunting of dolphins after environmentalists objected to the deaths of about 23,000 dolphins there each year.

The issue raised emotions in the coastal town on Australia's west coast, leading to dolphin cut-outs with the wording "Stop the Slaughter" being left at the town's Japanese cemetery.

The council expressed "its sorrow for the public distress caused to the Japanese community by the offensive material" left at the cemetery and said it would install surveillance cameras in the area.

But it noted that it did not condone the harvest of dolphins in Taiji, with which it forged sister-city relations in 1981.

Diplomatic tensions have emerged between Australia and Japan in recent years over Tokyo's continued hunting of whales under the guise of scientific inquiry.