Sunday, 5 November, 2006

by Michelle Grattan
The Age

AUSTRALIA'S proposed safeguards are inadequate to track any diversion of its uranium exports to China's nuclear weapons program, a report released today claims.

The planned big exports to China and potential large through-puts of spent reactor fuel to extract plutonium increase the risks Australian nuclear material could be diverted, without detection, to military programs, it says.

"The capacity to verify that such diversion has occurred is lacking," says the report, issued by the Australian Conservation Foundation and the Medical Association for Prevention of War. The report has been prepared by a team including academic experts.

It says the way in which Australian safeguards in China are to operate will be subject to secret administrative arrangements, yet to be negotiated. "Beijing is likely to drive a hard bargain. The history of Australian diluting of safeguards in favour of commercial considerations suggests that Canberra is likely to oblige," it states.

The report calls for the administrative arrangements to be made public and Parliament to scrutinise them. The safeguards agreement is currently before the parliamentary treaties committee.

The nature of the strategic and economic relationship between the two countries shows China has greater leverage over Canberra than vice versa, the report says. The result is that "claimed safeguards assurances in the bilateral agreement cannot be relied upon in practice".

China's system for accounting for its nuclear material is lax. It lacks even an adequate physical inventory of fissile materials. This seriously erodes "the veracity of the book-keeping exercise of Australian safeguards policy", says the report. "If Beijing does not have a precise inventory of nuclear material it becomes difficult to accept the proposition that Canberra can do better."

The question of relative influence is important because the bilateral agreement doesn't lock China into a set system of safeguards over the 30 years of the agreement, the report says.

Should the safeguards agreement be revised, as the agreement allows for, "it is to be expected that the revision will again continue the trend of weakening Australian safeguards policy in favour of commercial interests".