The International Maritime Organization plans to devise a treaty to tackle harmful aquatic organisms found in the ballast water that freighters carry from one part of the world to another, Japanese sources said Wednesday.
Negotiations on the treaty are expected to open in April in London, the headquarters for the U.N. maritime agency.
Japan favors some kind of international control on the discharge of ballast water -- estimated at 10 billion tons a year worldwide -- and plans to present a draft of the proposed treaty to the IMO in April, the government sources said.
"It is good to have a standardized, international regime to control ballast water. That's why we need a treaty," a spokesman at the Land, Infrastructure and Transport Ministry's Environmental and Maritime Division said.
The IMO's Maritime Environment Protection Committee has already set up a special panel to work on the proposed treaty, targeted for adoption not later than 2003.
According to a preliminary draft prepared for the IMO committee, signatory countries would be obliged to keep records on the intake and discharge of ballast water and set up ballast water management plans.