Japan promised today to hand over a Briton and Australian who were seized when they leaped on board a harpoon ship off Antarctica in a anti-whaling protest.
The Japanese Fisheries Agency said it told anti-whaling group Sea Shepherd to come and pick up its
Crew of the Japanese whaling ship Yushin Maru spray water on anti-whaling activists of the environmental group Sea Shepherd Conservation Society during a confrontation in the Southern Ocean.
two activists, and issued safety instructions for the hand-over.
But Sea Shepherd founder Paul Watson said Japan was demanding that the group end its harassment of the whaling fleet as a condition of securing the pair's freedom.
Australia criticised both sides for behaving in a potentially dangerous way.
Australian Benjamin Potts, 28, and Briton Giles Lane, 35, were held yesterday by the crew of the Yushin Maru No 2 after leaping aboard the whaler. They were tied up on deck while other Sea Shepherd activists threw bottles of acid, Japanese officials said.
Mr Watson said the activists wanted to deliver a letter demanding an end to the whale hunt and then leave, but were assaulted and held against their will.
Glenn Inwood, a spokesman for Japan's Institute for Cetacean Research that organises the hunt, accused Sea Shepherd of stalling the hand-over to get more publicity.
"It is completely illegal to board anyone's vessel... on the high seas so this can be seen as nothing more than an act of piracy by the Sea Shepherd group," Mr Inwood said.
Mr Watson, captain of Sea Shepherd's ship Steve Irwin, justified the boarding by charging that Japan's whale hunt was a violation of international law.