Tokyo is tipped to emerge from a cliffhanger vote on Friday along with fellow pro-whaling states with a simple majority on the 70-nation International Whaling Commission (IWC) meeting in St Kitts and Nevis in the West Indies.

Environmentalists fear Japan, backed by other pro-whaling nations, would use a majority to chip away at a two-decades-old moratorium on commercial whaling and to block conservation efforts.

They also fear Japan would try to remove Greenpeace's observer status at the IWC and introduce secret ballots.

"Everyone thought this was done -- that these animals have been protected," said Joshua Reichert, Director of the Environment program at Pew Charitable Trusts.

"We had won a battle but have slowly been losing the war."

The new fight over whaling has dismayed campaigners who joined up to "Save the Whales" in the 1970s and found themselves part of a nascent environmental movement.

Japan, along with Norway and Iceland, the only three nations to carry out significant whaling, argues the moratorium had done its job -- and that certain species are plentiful enough to hunt. Currently, Japan conducts what is known as "scientific whaling" which is permitted by the IWC. In all, pro-whaling states take around 2,000 whales a year.

While the ban on commercial whaling is not itself in immediate peril -- a 75 percent majority is needed to overturn it -- anti-whaling campaigners will show up at the June 16-20 meeting fearing the worst.

"It's a very close call, it depends on who actually physically shows up and who has their dues paid," said Buffy Baumann, Greenpeace Oceans Campaigner.

New IWC nations Guatemala, the Marshall Islands and Cambodia, with little whaling history, are expected to vote with Japan.

Israel has also signed up -- reportedly at the behest of the United States, which opposes a return to commercial whaling.

Alarmed by Japan's looming diplomatic coup, anti-whaling activists have sprung into action.

"Ready, Aim ... Act" reads a striking campaign poster by the International Fund for Animal Welfare (IFAW), showing a whale soaring gloriously out of the sea, alongside a sillouette of a hunter lining up a harpoon.

Japan disputes the idea that whales are again in danger.

"The whole argument about Save the Whale does not really apply any more," said Gavin Carter, a US-based advisor to Japan's whaling industry.

"The whale has been saved. The question now is not how to save the whale, but how do we manage whale stocks?"

But anti-whaling nations, including Australia, embarked on a last minute effort to shore up the anti-whaling majority.

Australia's Environment Minister Ian Campbell last month trawled for support from three Pacific nations -- Kiribati, the Marshall Islands and Vanuatu Japan's opponents accuse Tokyo of "bribing" small, impoverished, African and Carribbean nations with aid to join the pro-whaling bandwagon.

Tokyo denies this, pointing out that it also supports nations which oppose whaling, such as India and Argentina.

"I expect this polarisation to continue," Stefan Asmundsson, Iceland's top delegate to the IWC told AFP.

There are sharp disagreements about the health of whale stocks.

Most recent IWC scientific estimates say there are 760,000 Minke whales in the Antarctic, 149,000 in the North Atlantic and 25,000 in the North Pacific.

But the Antarctic figure is being reevaluated, and may be smaller, underscoring the difficulty of assessing precise whale populations.

Japan argues that lifting the moratorium on commercial whaling would not mean a return to large scaling international whaling fleets, and that hunts could be carefully monitored to ensure sustainability.

At the heart of the dispute is a clash on what exactly the IWC is for.

Pro-whaling nations hark back to the original purpose of the IWC which was to ensure "proper and effective conservation and development of whale stocks."

But the anti-whale lobby says there is no place in a modern world for an organisation which promotes the killing of whales. "There are only three countries in the world that engage in scientific whaling. The other countries in the world have to really exert some pressure on these countries to stop," said Reichert.

Such discord has observers on both sides questioning the IWC's longevity. Japan has already warned it will propose an additional forum, just for pro-whaling nations to sideline "hardliners."

Norway, the only country in the world that permits commercial whale hunting, shows no sign of backing down either, in a year in which it authorised its whalers to harpoon 1,052 minke whales, the highest quota in 20 years.

Anti-whalers are "just repeating old positions, positions not at all helpful to the IWC to make this a viable organisation," said Karsten Klepsvik, head of the Norwegian delegation said.

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