Labor to block sales to India
Saturday, 18 August, 2007
by Craig Skehan
Sydney Morning Herald
The stand is significant because it is highly doubtful there would be time for a bilateral agreement to be concluded by the Howard Government with India, and supply contracts signed, before the next federal election.
"We certainly won't grant permission for there to be export of uranium to India," Mr McClelland said. He suggested that Australian uranium mining companies take note of Labor's position.
"They have to look at the forthcoming elections and they have got to know clearly what Labor's policies will be," he said.
He said that Howard was "quite happy" to sell uranium to India even though it was not a signatory to the nuclear non-proliferation treaty (NPT). "But you have got to ask why isn't India a party to the nuclear non-proliferation regime and the answer is because it doesn't want to commit to disarm its nuclear weapons," he said.
However, Labor was open to accepting the Howard Government's move to allow Australian uranium to be used in Russian nuclear power reactors because Moscow is a signatory to the NPT.
This came as officials in Canberra confirmed that negotiations were under way to "expand" a 1990 safeguards agreement with Russia to allow Australian uranium to be used to generate electricity. Russia is already enriching Australian uranium for buyers in other countries.
The Minister for Foreign Affairs, Alexander Downer, said yesterday he did not think there was "any danger" of Russia becoming a "rogue state" through the export of nuclear weapons technologies.
On India, Mr Downer said it was not realistic to believe New Delhi would destroy its nuclear weapons stocks and sign the NPT, but the safeguards agreement being sought by Australia would guarantee United Nations power station inspections.
He said India's fast-growing economy needed energy and nuclear power would mean less greenhouse gas emissions.
The Australian Greens senator Christine Milne said yesterday that to claim India had a clean record on nuclear issues was "wrong, disingenuous and dangerous". She cited its 1974 nuclear weapon test and noted that in 2005 two Indian companies were sanctioned by the US for transferring missile and chemical weapons technology to Iran.