Opinion India and Australia’s Uranium

That the vote was won by a narrow margin,206-186,underlines how controversial the issue has been for the Labour Party and how bold Australian Prime Minister Julia Gillard has been in demanding a back flip on uranium exports to India.

For many decades now,Australia has insisted that it will export uranium only to those countries that sign the Nuclear Non-Proliferation Treaty (NPT). India is unlikely to ever sign the treaty,which freezes the list of recognized nuclear weapon states to five.

After the 46-nation Nuclear Suppliers Group made an exception for India in September 2008 and permitted atomic energy cooperation with India despite its unwillingness to sign the NPT,Delhi has sought a change in Australia’s uranium export policy.

Australia is the third largest producer of Uranium in the world,after Kazakhstan and Canada. With India planning a major expansion of its nuclear electricity generation,Australia seemed a natural source of uranium.

The Liberal Party in Australia was open to changing Canberra’s nuclear export policy,but lost the elections in 2007. The Labour Party,because of its ideological commitment to nuclear disarmament and non-proliferation,has been far more squeamish.

In an effort to build a new relationship with India,Gillard confronted one of Labour Party’s biggest taboos and prevailed.

As Australia’s foreign minister Kevin Rudd reminded the world on Sunday night,the export of uranium to India will be subject to stringent conditions that will have to be negotiated in a bilateral safeguards agreement.

Meanwhile the Fukushima nuclear incident and India’s self-goal in passing an unsustainable nuclear liability legislation last year have cast a shadow over the prospects for a rapid expansion of the atomic electricity generation in India.

India already has agreements with many other uranium producers and might not need to import it right away from Australia. The lifting of the export ban,however,ends what Delhi sees as Canberra’s discrimination against India.

This in turn should help generate greater mutual trust and political confidence. It is up to Delhi now to discard its own long-standing blinkers about about Australia’s important role in Asia and the world and move vigorously towards the construction of a durable economic and security partnership with Canberra.