By Richard Black
Environment correspondent, BBC News website, The Hague
Japan's long-term strategy to see a re-introduction of commercial whale hunting has suffered another rebuff.
Its motion asking the Convention on International Trade in Endangered Species (CITES) to review whale stocks was defeated.
Approval for the motion, discussed at the CITES summit in The Hague, could have led to a resumption in a legal trade in whalemeat.
A similar proposal on fin whales by Iceland was also defeated.
The CITES conference follows hard on the heels of the International Whaling Commission annual meeting, which saw Japan suffer reverses on a number of issues.
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