“The population of elephants in south Africa is very stable, and the south African nations should be allowed to reopen the trade for the sustainable use of ivory products. In Japan, the ivory industry is very traditional, and we regard it as an important part of Japanese culture.”Tokyo’s Environment Agency is wary of raising the issue for fear of reinforcing Japan’s reputation as a environmental violator. A controlled trade, they argue, would also generate much-needed funds for conservation projects.”When the ban first came in, there was a decline in poaching, but all the indications are that the scale of the illegal trade is increasing,” says Dr Malan Lindeque, Namibia’s deputy director of resource management, who set up the February meeting. Since the ban, craftsmen have relied on stocks but only 160 tons remain and they will run out in five or six years.At the same time, African countries are becoming increasingly frustrated by the ban which prevents them from selling off large stocks of tusks, legitimately gathered during official culls.Half of elephants in Africa live outside the game reserves and, despite culling, they are often a great nuisance to farmers and inhabitants.

African officials believe that the ban encourages poaching by driving up the market price of ivory, and fostering an atmosphere in which elephants are regarded as a menace rather than a valuable resource. In February, Japanese bureaucrats secretly met at the Mokuti Lodge in Namibia’s Etosha National Park with officials from Namibia, Botswana, Zimbabwe and Malawi, who collectively make up the South Africa Centre for the Ivory Trade (Sacit).
Delegates at the meeting, who included representatives of environmental NGOs and the British Department of the Environment, expect to reach a final decision in the next three months. But Japanese officials are quietly confident that they will lend their support to a lifting of the ivory ban, and the issue is likely to be raised at the next Cites convention in Zimbabwe in 1997.Japan is one of the biggest ivory markets in the world, and almost 4,000 businesses rely on elephant tusks for the manufacture of jewellery, traditional musical instruments and personal seals, which are widely used in place of signatures. The Japanese government is set to be drawn into a fresh environmental controversy about the banned trade in African ivory.

Southern African nations have enlisted the support of Japan – traditionally a leading user of ivory – in talks aimed at amending the United Nations Convention on International Trade in Endangered Species (Cites), which implemented a ban on sales of ivory in 1989. Geneva (Reuter) – The United Nations refugee agency, making a rare foray into United States domestic politics, said yesterday it would lobby “at the highest levels” against planned US laws it feared could deny asylum to genuine refugees. A senior official with the UN High Commissioner for Refugees (UNHCR), Dennis McNamara, said bills before the US Congress to curb illegal immigration could violate the 1951 Refugee Convention and its 1967 additional protocol, to which the US is a party.
“Our concern is that we will have people removed to unsafe situations.” Mr McNamara said.One section of the proposals, due to go before the Senate in mid-April, and to which the UNHCR objects, would allowofficials to deny potential refugees a judicial hearing if they did not establish in a preliminary interview a “credible fear of persecution” if they were forced to return home.. The US has made it plain that it will not come forward with the roughly $1.5bn that it owes the organisation unless it proves its willingness to begin serious internal reforms, including some reduction in its size.. “And everyone notices all the UN-bashing that goes on and that affects morale”.Many inside the bureaucracy also have little confidence that the opportunity will be taken to ensure that it is the deadwood that is jettisoned and not those who are genuinely talented and energetic “That is an understatement,” one source said. “I am sure they will get it wrong”.Politically speaking, however, some pruning of the UN staff is unavoidable. The administration and management divisions of the UN will see their budget cut by as much as $48m.The impact of the cuts will be widespread and will be felt by almost anyone, including charities and governments, that overlaps with UN activities.

There will be fewer UN conferences, fewer publications, fewer reports and fewer UN personnel around the world.The atmosphere in the corridors of the UN’s headquarters in New York, meanwhile, is morose at best, even among those whose jobs may be secure. “There is despondency, because everyone is aware that everything that they are working on is going to be less effective,” one senior official noted. In addition to shedding people, the UN will cut back what it offers in almost every sphere of its activities.Details of those cuts are contained in documents that began circulating in New York yesterday. Departments slated for large cuts in operating resources include public information (by as much as $8m), human rights ($2.9m), Economic Commission for Africa ($4.7m), peace- keeping ($6.4m) and political affairs ($3.5m).