SINGAPORE: Australian Foreign Minister Alexander Downer on Tuesday rejected concerns that Canberra’s proposed sale of uranium to India would pose a risk of proliferation of nuclear weapons. “I don’t think there is a risk,” Mr. Downer said, emphasising that India’s possession of nuclear weapons “is a done deal.” He said “they don’t need Australian uranium for that.”
Speaking in Canberra before submitting the India-specific initiative to a security panel of the Australian Cabinet, he said any sale of uranium would be “absolutely” conditional upon a nuclear safeguards agreement being negotiated for the purpose. If the United States-India civil nuclear energy deal “is concluded” through “a whole lot of ratification processes,” Australia might then be able to negotiate a safeguards accord with New Delhi.
In a related development, Australian Parliament rejected, by a margin of 57 votes to seven, a move by the Opposition Greens to call upon Canberra to “block the U.S.-India nuclear deal in the Nuclear Suppliers Group.”
The bottom line, according to Mr. Downer, was that “India has no record of being a proliferator of nuclear materials.” So, the sale of uranium to New Delhi would make no difference to the India-Pakistan equation, given especially that Islamabad’s “past” record was “very poor.”
Another dimension was the need to contain the global climate change. For this, “Australia exports uranium to many countries such as China, the U.S., and so on.”
Responding to questions from Hindu The, Mr. Downer said in Manila a few days ago that Australia’s recent uranium export deal with China would serve as a benchmark for the proposed accord with India.
