By Neena Bhandari, IANS
Sydney : Australia should commence uranium exports to India, Foreign Affairs Minister Alexander Downer will recommend this to the National Security Committee of Cabinet Tuesday.
In an interview to the Australian Broadcasting Corporation (ABC), Downer said that no decision has been made regarding sale of uranium to India and any such sale would be conditional to a treaty being negotiated.
“We would first of all have to negotiate a nuclear safeguards agreement with India and under that agreement, any uranium that would be exported to India would have to be subject to International Atomic Energy Agency (IAEA) monitoring and so would be the nuclear power plants that the uranium was used for.”
He said Australia might be able to negotiate a nuclear safeguards agreement with India, “if the India-America agreement is concluded – and by the way, although the negotiations are concluded, there are a whole lot of ratification processes to go through yet – if it is concluded, that will mean that the IAEA would inspect and make transparent some of India’s nuclear power plants”.
Downer ruled out any risks involved in supplying uranium to India.
“The reverse in fact is the case – that the more you can get the India nuclear programme – civil nuclear programme under UN inspections – and under the UN protocols of the IAEA, the better,” he said. I think that creates a safer and more secure environment for those power stations. That it has got nuclear weapons already, that is a done deal. They don’t need Australian uranium for that.”
Australia exports uranium to many countries such as China and the US but India’s case would be different as it is not a signatory to the Nuclear Non-Proliferation Treaty.
Downer reiterated that unlike Pakistan, India has no record of being a proliferator of nuclear materials. “Pakistan has a very poor record of proliferation and it did have – not now – but it did have in the past.”
In the 1990s, India was seen as a problem by Australia and the West, especially in non-proliferation but with India’s economic rise spearheading energy demand, countries like Australia want to capitalise on it.
“The other thing of course is the climate change issue… This goes into nuclear power plants. They are obviously, in terms of CO2 emissions, a big improvement on coal fired power stations,” Downer said.