By Paritosh Parasher, IANS,
Melbourne: The Australian prime minister’s plan to lift a ban on uranium exports to India has come in for left-wing criticism, but Julia Gillard is clear she wants strong ties with a “dynamic, democratic India”.
“It is time for (ruling) Labor to modernise our platform and enable us to strengthen our connection with dynamic, democratic India,” Julia Gillard declared in an article published in The Age newspaper Tuesday.
It did not take critics of uranium sale to India long to hit back.
“This has come out of the blue,” Labor Senator Doug Cameron told ABC Radio Tuesday. Senator Cameron, who is the convener of the left-wing faction, reminded that Australia had forced China to sign the Nuclear Non-Proliferation Treaty (NNPT) before allowing uranium sales.
“These are the tests that we laid out, and we’re changing those tests for India,” he added.
Both the Left faction and coalition partner Green Party were, however, expected to criticise Julia Gillard’s plan to revisit, what has been seen by the Australian media and political commentators for very long as an anachronistic ban on uranium sales to India for nuclear power generation. The ban is considered as a major roadblock and one that hurts Australia-India ties.
Australia under Labor rule has been refusing to sell uranium to India as the latter has not ratified the nuclear non-proliferation treaty, a prerequisite Australia puts on uranium exports.
The leftist faction of Labor Party wanted the ban to go on irrespective of the Australian trade and political compulsions.
Gillard, who met Indian Prime Minister Manmohan Singh at the G20 summit at Cannes, and a number of her senior party colleagues, has been urging the lifting of the ban on uranium exports to India as the South Asian country has shown remarkable nuclear compliance.
“We will not sell India uranium for peaceful purposes – though Canada is preparing to – while policy allows us to export it to countries such as China, Japan and the United States,” Gillard wrote in her The Age article Tuesday.
She however added that “we must, of course, expect of India the same standards we do of all countries for uranium export”.
Cameron would not have any of such reassuring statements advocating sale of uranium to India. He is not convinced about India having access to sufficient uranium supplies through Canada and other countries to meet its peacetime and military requirements.
“We’ll simply be exporting uranium to India and that will free up uranium within India for the military programme.”
Senator Cameron has also criticised suggestions that Australian jobs and trade would be adversely affected if the uranium ban is not lifted as “a silly argument”.
Australian Greens Party head Bob Brown has also criticised Gillard’s plan to lift the uranium export ban with a warning that it would lead to the “nuclear arms race”.
Senator Bob Brown has reminded that India has nuclear weapon programme and Australian uranium would fuel nuclear race in a volatile region. “This is a country that has intermediate-range missiles,” Senator Brown told ABC radio Tuesday.
“It’s developing a plethora of nuclear submarines with nuclear weapons,” he added.
The prime minister has, however, received support from her cabinet colleagues as Trade Minister Craig Emerson advocated selling uranium to India to boost Australian jobs.
“This is a policy change whose time has come,” Emerson was quoted by Sky News as saying Tuesday.
He also added that uranium export ban was an “anachronism”.
The debate for and against lifting the uranium exports to India is raging in Australian media including radio and television news channels. But most of the commentators agree that the sale of uranium to India is a fait accompli.
Julia Gillard would take up policy reversal matter in Labor Party’s National Conference early next month.
(Paritosh Parasher can be contacted at [email protected])