Federal Parliament's Treaties Committee has questioned whether Australia should be selling uranium to Russia given the recent dispute with Georgia.

The committee is investigating a proposed treaty which would allow Russia to buy Australian uranium providing it is for peaceful purposes and is not used in nuclear weapons.

Committee members have questioned why the International Atomic Energy Agency (IAEA) has not carried out any inspections in Russia since 2001.

Today committee chairman Kelvin Thomson said he was concerned that Russia's Prime Minister Vladimir Putin would not abide by the conditions of the treaty.

"I don't know if you've looked on the TV into Vladimir Putin's eyes - he is one tough son of a gun and I don't think that he cares about what we think," he said.

"I think that we could supply uranium to him and if he changed his mind about the uses to which he was going to put it I don't think we'd have any effective comeback at all.

"Recently he's taken South Ossetia and another province off Georgia and there's no real comeback over that."

The head of the Australian Safeguards and Non-proliferation Office, John Carlson, says Russia is unlikely to breach the treaty because it would not be prepared to risk the supply of uranium required to generate its electricity.

"If Russia abrogates a safeguards agreement, clearly the state concerned, Australia, plus all others with similar agreements, would terminate supply," he said.

"So there would be quite strong national interest considerations against Russia shooting itself in the foot in that way."

The Federal Government says it will consider the way Russia has acted in Georgia when it decides whether to ratify the treaty to sell uranium.