Uranium deal in balance

Jonathan Pearlman Foreign Affairs Correspondent
Sydney Morning Herald

A LABOR-led committee is set to defy the Rudd Government and call for Australia to hold off on a sale of uranium to Russia worth billions of dollars.

A majority report by the Joint Standing Committee on Treaties - signed by the committee's Labor MPs and a Greens senator - is expected to call for the Government not to ratify the deal. Their report, which is due to be tabled today, is believed to cite concerns about recent political events - presumably the Georgia crisis - and the inspections and safeguards regime for Russian nuclear facilities.

A dissenting minority report by Coalition members is expected to endorse the deal.

But the majority is understood to have rejected the position of the Foreign Affairs Minister, Stephen Smith, who told Parliament earlier this month he would consider the committee's report but believed the agreement "meets Australia's longstanding safeguards requirements and promotes the highest international standards".

The Department of Foreign Affairs and Trade's experts on nuclear safeguards have also advised that Russia is likely to comply with the inspections regime and would be unlikely to use the uranium for weapons.

However, Mr Smith has said the conflict in Georgia could affect the deal and he asked Foreign Affairs officials to express Australia's concerns to the Russian ambassador, Alexander Blokhin.

The Labor MP who chairs the committee, Kelvin Thomson, said during the committee's hearings he believed Mr Putin, now the Russian Prime Minister, would renege on the pledge to use the uranium for peaceful purposes.

"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.

The deal was signed by the Howard government in September with Mr Putin to allow Russia to buy uranium for its domestic nuclear energy program. Its use is limited under the deal to "peaceful, non-military purposes".

Mr Blokhin has said a failure to ratify the deal would damage the economies of both countries and be regarded by Russia as "politically biased".


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