By DPA
Sydney : Australia is considering selling uranium to India to fuel the nuclear reactors needed to keep pace with the South Asian country's soaring electricity demand, news reports said Thursday.
Foreign Minister Alexander Downer is to put a submission to cabinet arguing that it doesn't make sense to forbid uranium exports to India but not to China, The Australian newspaper reported.
The sticking point with India has been its refusal to sign the Nuclear Non-Proliferation Treaty (NPT). Earlier this year, Downer said it was possible Canberra could follow the lead of the US and skirt the NPT requirement by striking a bilateral agreement with India on nuclear safeguards.
Prime Minister John Howard had also shown a softening in a policy requiring importing countries be NPT signatories.
"Certainly our policy to date has been to prohibit sales to countries which are not signatories to the Nuclear Non-Proliferation Treaty," Howard said earlier this year. "But as time goes by, if India were to meet safeguard obligations, some Australians would see it as anomalous that we would sell uranium to China but not India."
Australia has 40 percent of the world's known uranium reserves and is the top exporter of the metal used to fuel reactors.
The issue is divisive in Australia because the opposition Labor Party argues that selling uranium to India would undermine the NPT. Labor is well ahead in opinion polls and is seen as the likely victor in general elections expected in November.
India, though not an NPT signatory, has a good record of not passing on nuclear technology. India refuses to sign the NPT because of concerns that it restricts nuclear weapons to those countries in possession of them when the pact was drawn up in 1970.
China, which is an NPT signatory, is suspected by some of passing on nuclear secrets. In April 2006, China signed a contract to import uranium from Australia.
Howard visited India in March 2006 and was pressed by Indian counterpart Manmohan Singh to allow sales of uranium. He agreed to send a delegation to India and the US to study the agreement between Washington and Delhi to share nuclear-power technology.
Australia's top daily newspaper reported that Canberra plans to negotiate a nuclear-safeguards agreement with India over permissible uses for Australian uranium. India would be required to separate its civilian nuclear-energy programme from its military nuclear-weapons programme, and Australian uranium would go only to peaceful nuclear power plants.