Thursday, 30 August, 2007

by Khalid Hasan
The Daily Times

WASHINGTON: Australia, which has announced that it will sell uranium to India, will be violating its international legal obligations if it does so, according to Leonard S Spector of the California-based James Martin Centre for Non-proliferation Studies, “The question of whether Australia can legally export uranium to India is no longer in doubt. It cannot,” he said.

According to him, official records show that Australian Foreign Minister Alexander Downer told the Australian Parliament unambiguously that the 1985 South Pacific Nuclear Free Zone Treaty bans Australian uranium exports to states like India.

Downer made the statement in 1996, during consideration of uranium exports to Taiwan. The point was repeated before Parliament in 2001 by a more junior Department of Foreign Affairs and Trade diplomat, presumably with Downer’s authorisation, in conjunction with nuclear exports to Argentina, the Czech Republic, Hungary, and Taiwan. Australia signed the treaty in 1985, which entered into force in December 1986.

Despite earlier statements, on August 16, 2007, Prime Minister John Howard announced that Australia is prepared to sell uranium to India, ending a long-standing embargo. According to Spector, the announcement anticipates a controversial change in international nuclear trade rules being sought by the United States to permit peaceful nuclear cooperation with India, pursuant to a July 18, 2005, agreement between US President George Bush and Indian Prime Minister Manmohan Singh. Under the 1996 and 2001 determinations by the Australian Department of Foreign Affairs and Trade, however, Australian uranium sales to India would be a violation of Australia’s treaty obligations.

The South Pacific Nuclear Free Zone Treaty bans nuclear testing in the region. But it also prohibits parties from making nuclear exports to states, like India, that have refused to place all of their nuclear activities under monitoring by the International Atomic Energy Agency. The shorthand for these comprehensive inspections is “full-scope safeguards,” Spector explained. India declared itself a nuclear power in 1998.

But under the 1968 nuclear Non-proliferation Treaty (NPT), only countries that detonated nuclear explosions before 1967 — the United States, Russia, the UK, France, and China — are considered legitimate nuclear weapon states. All other countries are considered non-nuclear weapon states.