Henrik Fischer, Chairman of the IWC, supports the speedy completion of the Revised Management Schedule (RMS), the system for establishing and administering conservative catch quotas that his been blocked by anti-whaling delegations for the last ten years.

In a statement to Commissioners issued on 19 July, Mr. Fischer, who is unable to attend the meeting because of illness, stated that, "the time is right for the Commission to make real and directed progress towards an RMS." He expects the RMS to ready for adoption at the next IWC meeting in South Korea in 2005.

Mr. Fischer said: "I fear that failure to put an RMS in place may not only jeopardize the future of the IWC, but perhaps more importantly serve neither the interests of whale conservation nor management - the dual mandates of our Convention." The International Convention on the Regulation of Whaling (ICRW) was established "to provide for the proper conservation of whale stocks and thus make possible the orderly development of the whaling industry."

Mr. Fischer established a special group of eight countries to try to resolve differences over the RMS and now believes he has a "fair and realistic proposal" that should be acceptable to all IWC member states.

Mr. Fischer said: "I recognize that the completion and timely adoption of the RMS will require an atmosphere of trust and mutual understanding among member governments that has often appeared to be lacking in recent meetings."

But in a direct challenge to the Chairman, Sir Geoffrey Palmer, New Zealand's IWC Commissioner, told Radio New Zealand that the RMS would not be agreed "until at least the meeting in Korea next year and we may not get it then. New Zealand is opposed to the resumption of commercial whaling and the Chair's proposal does link the development of the Revised Management Scheme to the lifting of the moratorium on commercial whaling."

In stark contrast to the "constructive" approach of the working group, Palmer warned: "There are at least ten features of the detailed proposal that wouldn't be acceptable to New Zealand in any event." New Zealand was excluded from the Chairman's RMS working group and has consistently lobbied against establishing a whale management system.

Eugene Lapointe, President of IWMC, said: "Mr. Fischer is showing tremendous leadership in trying to resolve the RMS deadlock. If New Zealand is successful in its attempts to thwart the Chairman, it seems inevitable that the IWC will fail in its mission to manage whaling. Without an RMS, the IWC will implode and we will return to an era of zero international regulation."