Australia flags possible uranium sales to India

Sep 25, 2006, 4:57 GMT

Sydney - Australia could sell uranium to India despite the New Delhi government's refusal to sign the Nuclear Non-Proliferation Treaty (NPT), Prime Minister John Howard said Monday.

'Certainly our policy to date has been to prohibit sales to countries which are not signatories to the nuclear non-proliferation treaty,' Howard told reporters. 'But as time goes by, if India were to meet safeguard obligations, some Australians would see it as anomalous that we would sell uranium to China, but not India.'

China, which is a signatory to the NPT, sealed a deal in April for importing uranium from Australia, which with 40 per cent of the world's known reserves, is the top exporter.

There has been speculation that if India allowed International Atomic Energy Agency (IAEA) inspections of its nuclear facilities, exports could proceed. Stoking the speculation was a meeting in Delhi earlier this year between India's senior foreign ministry diplomat Shyam Saran and Australian Department of Foreign Affairs and Trade (DFAT) deputy secretary David Ritchie.

Howard visited India in March and was pressed by Indian counterpart Manmohan Singh to allow sales of uranium. Howard agreed to send a delegation to India and the United States to learn more about the agreement between Washington and Delhi to share nuclear power technology.

The Indian government has refused to sign the NPT because it restricts nuclear weapons to those countries who were in possession of them when the treaty was drawn up in 1970.

Howard has come under pressure from critics to hold firm to stated government policy that there will be no uranium sales to countries that are not NPT signatories.

The Labor Party's Kevin Rudd, opposition spokesman on foreign affairs, said Canberra should hold firm and not sell to any country that hadn't signed the NPT.

'If we fail to do so and the regime collapses, we then end up with nuclear arms races right across our own part of the world,' Rudd said. 'We have a national interest in taking the lead in rebuilding the non-proliferation regime.'