By Jeremy Lovell

LONDON, March 8 (Reuters) - An international whaling meeting sought on Saturday to calm tempers that have threatened to rip the organisation apart, but made no substantive progress on key issues, one delegate said.

The inter-sessional meeting of the International Whaling Commission agreed to work more through consensus and reduce the use of voting which tends to force confrontation, but did not tackle the key issue of just what role the IWC should play.

"It was a lot more relaxed than I feared it might be. The presence of three top rank negotiators really helped focus minds," the delegate said on condition of anonymity.

"But it did not even go near the central question of whether the IWC should allow more whaling or become a serious conservation organisation," the delegate added.

The meeting did call on anti-whaling campaigners to be less aggressive in their actions at sea -- singling out the Sea Shepherd Conservation Society whose boat has been involved in clashes with Japanese whalers in the Antarctic.

"It (the meeting) called upon the Sea Shepherd Conservation Society to refrain from dangerous actions that jeopardise safety at sea, and on vessels and crews concerned to exercise restraint," it said in a statement.

"The Commission and its Contracting Governments do not condone and in fact condemn any actions that are a risk to human life and property," it added.

The three-day, closed door meeting was called after the last full meeting of the 78-member IWC in Anchorage, Alaska in May at which Japan threatened to quit in protest at being refused permission to allow limited coastal whaling to recommence.

Commercial whaling was outlawed in 1986 after a sharp drop in whale numbers as a result of industrial scale hunting.

Japan, which already conducts a large scientific whaling programme that conservationists say is a sham cover for commercial hunting, has along with Norway been in the forefront of efforts to get the ban lifted.

The pro-whalers are equally vehemently opposed by the anti-hunting group led by Britain and Australia who want a move towards full-scale conservation of whales instead.

"The IWC has in recent years shown increasing signs of polarisation and has reached something of an impasse. That is why the Annual Meeting in Anchorage last year decided to hold this London meeting," IWC chairman William Hogarth said in a statement following the meeting.

"Intensive discussions following the presentations of the outside experts isolated a number of issues that the Commission will consider in order to improve its practice and procedures," he added, noting agreement on a cooling-off period and a move to smaller discussion groups.

The opposing camps will meet again at the next full IWC meeting in June in Santiago. (Editing by Matthew Jones)

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