-remote option: calling an already running instance of mozilla/firefox

	I would like to launch the mozilla/firefox apps from within a java 
program. When a call is made from within a program to get mozilla or 
firefox to display a url it always trys to start a new instance of the 
app. The call is made by passing the path to the app 
binary(../app?.app/Contents/MacOS/binary?) with parameters including the 
url to a standard java RUNTIME api. If the app is already running, it 
insists that you choose a different profile than the currently running 
instance. The desired behavior is for the call to start a new instance 
if one is not running or to use an existing instance if one is already 
running. This is the behavior under windows. It is also the behavior 
under unix/linux if you use a special '-remote' option. That option is 
not available under the OS X versions of mozilla/firebird(and 
thunderbird?). It does reflect the  standard behavior of Camino(and 
probably safari) on OS X.
	An example of where this functionality is used is Oracle's JDeveloper 
java application development suite. It is useful for calling different 
browsers to display web apps under development. I think macromedia also 
uses this interface as well as the Eclipse ide and there may be others. 
So my questions are:

1) Why can't the OS X version of mozilla/firebird also have the -remote 
option, as other unix flavors do?
2) Is there a way of calling apps from within java code that ends up 
calling the 'launcher' service, which would solve this, without using 
java calls specific to the OS X platform?