TAIPEI, April 24, 2008 (Reuters) 

Taiwan is drafting a public statement to slam Greenpeace activists who boarded a fishing boat in the South Pacific earlier this week to check for an illegal shark fin harvest, a fisheries official said on Thursday.

The Fisheries Agency will send a protest letter to the multi-lateral Western and Central Pacific Fisheries Commission and to Greenpace, an international environmental group that the government says inappropriately forced its way onto a Taiwan-registered boat on Monday to inspect the shark catch.

"This took place on the high seas, and it was done by a private organisation, not by law enforcement agencies," said James Sha, the agency's deputy director-general. "Their actions were extreme, and they distorted the evidence."

Actvists on the Greenpeace ship Esperanza obtained the Taiwan crew's permission to board the ship in waters east of the Solomon Islands and found about 110 kilos of shark fins, Greenpeace oceans campaigner Jason Collins said.

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