PARIS — Japan will not join in any agreement to ban international trade in Atlantic bluefin tuna under the United Nations treaty on endangered species, the country’s top fisheries negotiator said.
The negotiator, Masanori Miyahara, said in a telephone interview this week that Japan “would have no choice but to take a reservation” — in effect, to ignore the ban and leave its market open to continued imports — if the bluefin tuna were granted most-endangered species status.
“It’s a pity,” he said, “but it’s a matter of principle.”
Mr. Miyahara, Japan’s top delegate to the United Nations Convention on International Trade in Endangered Species of Wild Fauna and Flora, referred to as Cites, said the convention was the wrong forum for managing the fishing of the bluefin tuna.