By Neena Bhandari, IANS
Sydney : Australia should keep its options open for selling uranium to India and not link any such sales to New Delhi signing the Nuclear Non-Proliferation Treaty (NPT), a leading Australian security expert says.
Rory Medcalf, programme director of international security at the Lowy Institute for International Policy, an independent think-tank based here, said Australia could capitalise on India's rising energy demand fuelled by all round economic growth.
"Energy needs is the critical issue in India's strategic interests. A uranium supply relationship could make Australia indispensable to the rise of India," he told a select gathering at the institute Wednesday.
However, he emphasised that achieving this relationship will not be straightforward.
"For a start, it would need the US-India nuclear pact to be sealed and this may take a few years. The deal would have to be blessed by the 45-member Nuclear Suppliers Group. India would have to conclude a special safeguards agreement with the International Atomic Energy Agency covering its civilian reactors and imported fuel. And Australia would need to negotiate its own agreements with India, as we have with China."
"We could consider selling uranium to India in tandem with new efforts to improve other aspects of global non-proliferation, such as a Fissile Material Cutoff Treaty", added Medcalf, who was a senior strategic analyst with the Office of National Assessments (ONA), Australia's peak intelligence analysis agency.
In the nineties, India was seen as a problem by Australia and the developed nations, especially in matters of non-proliferation, but today he says the same countries are looking "unashamedly in an India-centric way".
On whether the US deal with India will prove to be a precedent, Medcalf said, "India is a special case and the US will not be befriending Iran, North Korea or Pakistan."
For Australia, he felt there is a much larger array of common and converging interests with India – among others, "ensuring that the Pakistani state can resist terrorism and terrorist ideology".
As India looks beyond the region, especially to East Asia and the Middle East, Medcalf said, "I don't think Australia would be able to make itself indispensable to India in the long run. At the moment, Australia is struggling to be seen as something other than a deputy to the US."
He was confident that India will be among the top three military powers in the world within 20 years and that "India will help prolong US pre-eminence in the world, provided the India-US partnership endures".
He felt a US-India partnership will make the eventual shift to multi-polarity more palatable for the US. Strong relations with India would also be a good complement to Australia's ties with China.
"An investment in India's future could also be good insurance against any unhappy twist in the China tale. We have to decide how much we want strategic partnership with India, and at what price."
As an aside, Medcalf, who served at the Australian High Commission in New Delhi covering South Asian strategic affairs and helping build Australia-India security relations, added, "India's diplomatic resources haven't kept pace with its rise as an international power. The Ministry of External Affairs is far too small and talented people but far too few."