"This year is decision time," said Joji Morishita, Japan's top diplomat at the International Whaling Commission (IWC).

"We need to make very substantive progress, or some kind of decision at the Madeira meeting," he said, referring to the annual IWC gathering due to be held on the Portuguese island from June 22 to 26.

"We need to be very realistic and accept there is still quite a high risk of collapse," he told reporters. "This is almost a final try supported by both sides" in the pro- and anti-whaling debate, he added.

"So if we fail, we will need a cooling-off period," he said.

The IWC meetings have for years been passionate showdowns pitting Japan, which says whaling is part of its culture, against Australia and other Western nations.

In 2007, Japan failed in its bid to lift the 1986 moratorium on commercial whaling and threatened to withdraw its membership of the IWC.

Commission chairman William Hogarth convinced the Japanese to stay with the international body and a first interim meeting of the IWC was held in London, aimed at breaking the bitter deadlock.

Morishita, noting Hogarth's term as chairman was due to expire after the Madeira meeting, said Japan would like a solution within "a year or two."

"If the IWC fails, we would like to have some kind of international framework that would handle both the conservation and the management of whales," he said.

Japan kills some 1,000 whales a year using a loophole in the IWC moratorium on commercial whaling that allows "lethal research" on the ocean giants. It makes no secret of the fact that the meat ends up on dinner tables and says whaling is a cultural tradition.

Norway and Iceland defy the moratorium altogether.

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