Roseau, Dominica, AP — Members of prime minister, Pierre Charles’ party are urging him not to change the Caribbean nation’s stance against a South Pacific whale sanctuary, lest he risk losing Japanese investment in the fishing industry.

Dominica, along with five other Caribbean countries, sided with Japan to help defeat the proposed sanctuary at last year’s meeting of the International Whaling Commission in Australia. New Zealand and Australian back the sanctuary.

However, Charles said in a recent radio interview that Dominica’s vote this year “will only be known at the meeting itself”.

Charles recently appointed High Commissioner to London, George Williams, to represent Dominica at the commission meeting, replacing agriculture minister, Lloyd Pascal, who voted against the sanctuary last year. Williams’ position on whaling is not known.

This week, the Portsmouth Constituency Association of Charles’ Labour Party prepared a resolution urging the government to vote against the sanctuary and reinstate Pascal as the whaling commissioner. The Labour Party had promised Portsmouth residents a multi-million-dollar fisheries complex to be funded by Japan.

“Dominica will lose an opportunity for development if you go there and vote for that whale sanctuary or sit on the fence,” said Antigua’s commissioner to the whaling commission, Garvin Joseph, who spoke at the association meeting this week.

Japan is allowed to catch a limited number of whales under a scientific research program sanctioned by the International Whaling Commission.

But critics, including Greenpeace, say the whaling programme is simply a cover to supply Japanese restaurants with pricey whale meat.