(Adds detail) By Isabel Reynolds TOKYO, Feb 3 (Reuters) - Japan said on Tuesday it would not accept a compromise proposal on whaling if it meant the end of what it calls a research whaling programme, under which it aims to catch about 900 whales in Antarctic waters each year. The proposal, which would allow Japanese coastal whaling in return for cutting back or ending the Antarctic programme, was published on Monday by a panel of the International Whaling Commission (IWC). "We cannot accept a proposal that would end our research whaling programme," Agriculture and Fisheries minister Shigeru Ishiba told reporters on Tuesday. He said the government would consider a detailed response to the suggestions. The IWC panel is battling to bridge the gulf between pro- and anti-whaling nations, which threatens to undermine the body's functioning as a conservation body.<ID:nT339538> Japan officially complied with a 1986 global moratorium on whaling but continued the hunt for what it says are scientific research purposes. <ID:nT234819> Most of the meat ends up on dinner tables, in a practice that angers many in countries such as Australia and Britain. The latest proposal would allow up to five ships to hunt minke whales on day trips from four Japanese ports for a period of five years. After that, coastal whaling might either continue or be halted altogether, the panel's chairman, Alvaro de Soto, said in a report on the IWC website. In return, de Soto suggested Japan either phase out its Antarctic whaling over five years, or limit its hunt in accordance with IWC advice on sustainability. Conservation organisation WWF hit out at the ideas, saying they were biased towards Japan's viewpoint. "These compromise packages give too much to the whalers and not enough to whale conservation," Susan Lieberman, director of WWF's international species programme, said on the organisation's website. "What is needed is a plan to put an immediate halt to all scientific whaling, which simply has no place in the 21st century," she said. The compromise ideas are set to be discussed at an IWC meeting in Rome in March, ahead of an annual conference to be held in Madeira, Portugal, in June. (Reporting by Isabel Reynolds; Editing by Michael Watson)
