Greenpeace has criticised the International Whaling Commission (IWC) for readmitting Iceland despite the country's refusal to rule out a resumption of commercial hunting.
The British-based IWC voted on yesterday to allow Iceland back in as a full member for the first time in 10 years.
Iceland joins Norway as one of only two countries in the world which have negotiated the right to hunt whales for commercial purposes while still being IWC members.
"The commission's decision is thoroughly disappointing and defies all common sense," Greenpeace oceans campaigner Richard Page told journalists.
"Iceland's stance, in joining the commission while having a reservation about the moratorium on commercial whaling, is an act of bad faith," he added, saying the lives of minke and fin whales in the North Atlantic were in danger.
The vote was extremely tight. Of the IWC's 50 members, 19 voted in favour and 18 against. The other member countries were either absent or ineligible to vote.
Several key players, including Britain and the United States, opposed the decision.
Norway, which has long-standing objections to the worldwide moratorium on whale hunting, and Japan, which hunts whales for scientific purposes, backed Iceland.
Iceland left the IWC in 1992 in anger over the worldwide moratorium on commercial whale hunting, agreed in 1986 and implemented by the vast majority of IWC members.
It later tried to renegotiate its way back in but was rebuffed several times in the 1990s. Each time, Iceland made further concessions in an attempt to be re-accepted.
Its bid succeeded yesterday after it agreed it would not resume commercial whaling until 2006 at the earliest, and only then under strict regulations.
Greenpeace says all commercial whaling is wrong, regardless of how it is regulated, and warned Iceland it would endanger its own tourist industry if it started whaling again.