Nearly all anti-whaling nations boycotted the Tokyo meeting, seeing it as a ploy by Japan -- which hunts whales using a loophole in the global ban -- to rally support among allies, most of them developing countries.

Joji Morishita, Japan's chief negotiator at the commission, accused the Western-led anti-whaling camp of refusing to debate the issue.

"As I said at the IWC meeting last year, some kind of progress must be made in several years," Morishita told reporters. "If that does not happen, we must think about what we will do next."

Asked if Japan would leave the IWC, Morishita said: "That has always been on the table as an option for us for several years now, as have other options."

Environmentalists denounced the threat.

"The question is what they would do if they left. Would they set up an alternative body? Would it be open for everybody to join? If that's the case, then we might as well stick with the IWC," said Shane Rattenbury of Greenpeace.

"The reality is that many whales are endangered, some from the large-scale hunting in the past century. What we need to do is to be finding ways to recover and restore those stocks."

Japan invited all 72 IWC members for the talks aimed at "normalising" the confrontational whaling meetings, but only a handful of anti-whaling nations took part.

The final attendance was 37 nations, with major anti-whaling nations such as Australia, Britain, New Zealand and the United States boycotting.

Norway and Iceland are the only nations to conduct outright commercial whaling in defiance of the 1986 global moratorium.

Japan, which says whaling is part of its culture, kills more than 1,000 whales a year using a loophole that allows hunting for scientific research.

The hunt was interrupted Thursday as a fire broke out on a whaling ship, leaving one crewman missing. Animal rights activists had harassed the fleet for weeks but there was no apparent link to the blaze.

In Tokyo, a statement read by the meeting's chair nation Palau called for less passion on whaling and secret ballots on the IWC, whose ranks have swelled in recent years to include countries with little whaling tradition.

Japan said the proposal would be submitted before the next meeting in Alaska in May.

"I guess there are those countries that would immediately reject this only because it's a Japanese proposal. But we hope they will change their minds and objectively see this proposal and comment on it," Morishita said.

Japan also said it would ask to let fishermen of four Japanese coastal towns catch an unspecified number of minke whales under the same IWC rule that permits indigenous people in Alaska, Siberia and Greenland to hunt whales.

The proposal "would only allow community-based whaling in order to reinstate traditional and local practices ... and revitalise traditional festivals and rituals of the regions," it said.

Greenpeace's Rattenbury dismissed the idea, saying: "It's the same number of whales but just calling it a different name."

Greenpeace opposes all commercial whaling but says it does not oppose small-scale hunts if they do not threaten whale populations. In a bid to reach out to the Japanese public, Greenpeace recently launched a website in which travelers unaffiliated with the group visit whaling towns and sampled whale meat.

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