Global Security Newswire

Australia's Labor Party-led government could tap a "resources supply security dialogue" to inform India of a potential decision to permit uranium exports to the South Asian state, The Age on Thursday quoted an internal document from February as saying (see GSN, June 24).

Canberra today refuses to sell the material to any nation that has not signed the Nuclear Nonproliferation Treaty, including nuclear-armed antagonists India and Pakistan. Uranium can be used to power atomic energy plants or enriched further for use in nuclear weapons.

Existing policy also requires state recipients of Australian uranium to first enter an International Atomic Energy Agency inspections agreement, sign the IAEA Additional Protocol to the pact and complete a separate atomic safeguards deal with Canberra.

The resources exchange "may prove a useful avenue to communicate any policy shifts on the issue" at the Labor Party national forum slated for December, states an internal document prepared for Australian Resources and Energy Minister Martin Ferguson. "The dialogue could be elevated in the future as conditions allow agreement on exporting uranium to India," the memorandum states.

Ferguson appeared set to head a campaign for conference participants to "modernize" the party's stance on uranium, The Age reported. Previously in 2011, he said India has a "very, very good history of nuclear nonproliferation," though it remains outside the nonproliferation treaty.

The document should not be assigned "too much" significance, Ferguson said on Wednesday, adding his office was "simply noting all potential eventualities."

"The policy of the Australian government is clear -- we will only supply uranium to countries that are signatories to the Nuclear Nonproliferation Treaty and have signed a bilateral agreement with Australia," the official said. "This is not a policy specific to India; it applies equally to all countries. Any change in this policy would, in the first instance, require a change in Australian Labor Party policy."

The communication line with New Delhi is intended "neither to discuss nor to facilitate the export of uranium to India," Ferguson said. "Rather, its purpose would be to bolster bilateral country discussions on big-picture resource and energy questions, around supply and demand, prices and quality across a range of traded commodities."

"An initial meeting was held earlier this year to scope out the potential parameters of such a dialogue," he said. "The question of exporting uranium to India was not raised at this meeting. There has been no subsequent meeting to this initial meeting and the next meeting is yet to be scheduled."

im Wright, Australian director for the International Campaign to Abolish Nuclear Weapons, warned against exporting uranium to India. Wright's organization acquired the February document through a declassification law.

"Opening up uranium sales to India would fuel the nuclear arms race under way between India and Pakistan, which has potentially catastrophic consequences,'' Wright said on Wednesday. "The threat of a regional nuclear war between India and Pakistan is real. Selling uranium to India runs counter to Australia's own security interests, and makes a mockery of its stated commitment to a world free of nuclear weapons" (Michael Gordon, The Age, Oct. 13).