Saturday, 18 August, 2007

by Brendan Nicholson and Daniel Flitton
The Age

INDIA would never risk becoming an international pariah by illegally using Australian uranium in its nuclear weapons, says Foreign Minister Alexander Downer.

Australia negotiated strict safeguards agreements with all of the countries it sold uranium to, he said in an interview with The Age yesterday. "They have no incentive to breach international law and turn themselves into pariah states by illegally diverting the uranium from Australia into some nuclear weapons program," he said.

Opposition Leader Kevin Rudd said the Government was being irresponsible and reckless by negotiating sales to countries such as India that refused to sign the Non-Proliferation Treaty.

But Mr Downer said he had no doubt that selling uranium to India, under strict conditions, would strengthen, not compromise, non-proliferation.

"By bringing India into the nuclear safety ambit, which the American-India agreement does, contributes to the non-proliferation regime, not the reverse."

Mr Downer said India already had a nuclear weapons program but, with a billion people and an economy growing at 8 to 9 per cent per year, it needed massive amounts of energy.

"We want India to have clean energy.

"If you can develop a nuclear power industry in India which comes under UN supervision, under the International Atomic Energy Agency, you will have a better outcome in terms of non-proliferation and nuclear safety."

Without the agreement negotiated with the US India would go ahead anyway.

"But there won't be any UN inspectors there. There won't be any supervision. There won't be any of the latest safety technology — a lot less safe."

Mr Downer said there were a number of hurdles before Australia sold uranium to India.

The US-India agreement had to pass the US Senate and to be ratified and "that could be a challenge", Mr Downer said.

India would have to negotiate an agreement with the International Atomic Energy Agency. "That's probably not likely to be such a problem."

Then there had to be consensus in the Nuclear Suppliers' Group of more than 40 countries.

Most were supportive, but several were not, so that was not a done deal..

Then Australia and India would have to negotiate a nuclear safeguards agreement, he said.

Mr Rudd said Mr Downer was being reckless with Australia's national security by incrementally shredding the integrity of the NPT and the International Atomic Energy Agency with a series of one-off carve-outs.

What was Australia going to do when Iran, North Korea or other threshold states asked for uranium, Mr Rudd said.

"The NPT and the IAEA are not perfect institutions but they are the only ones we've got and they have played a significant role in non-proliferation over many decades."

Mr Downer said that for the international community to renegotiate the NPT would trigger a massive diplomatic fight that could destroy the treaty.

Some countries would push very hard to abolish the concept of a small number of countries being entitled to nuclear weapons while the UK, US, Russia, China and France were not going to give them up.

"Their basic philosophy is why should we forgo developing nuclear weapons if the five nuclear weapons states say they can keep theirs."