The chairman of the International Whaling Commission has pulled out of next week's crucial meeting in Morocco.
The commission's secretariat says Cristian Maquieira has withdrawn for reasons of ill health.
Mr Maquieira laid out a compromise deal earlier this year under which Japan would agree to reduce the number of whales it takes in Antarctic waters in return for limited commercial whaling.
Britain's Sunday Times has published evidence it says shows Japan is continuing to bribe small nations, including the Marshall Islands and Kiribati, to support its position.
A former president of Kiribati Teburoro Tito says he was never bribed and he doesn't know if his ministers were - but is not surprised by the reports.
Teburoro Tito, who was president from 1994 to 2003, says Pacific nations are targets for bigger countries with agendas to push, and says incentives and temptations are a fact of life for Pacific nations, especially poor ones.
New Zealand's International Whaling Commissioner Geoffrey Palmer is in Morocco for preliminary meetings but has declined to comment on either matter, and New Zealand's Foreign Affairs Minister Murray McCully has also refused to comment.
