Global Security Newswire

India's peaceful atomic activities are moving forward in spite of a prohibition on Australian uranium exports to the South Asian state, Canberra's top diplomat said on Thursday (see GSN, Oct. 13).

Australia has a longstanding ban on selling uranium to states that have not joined the Nuclear Nonproliferation Treaty. However, India in 2008 inked a landmark nuclear trade agreement with the United States and has been approved to procure atomic materials and technology from the 46-nation Nuclear Suppliers Group (see GSN, Sept. 28).

"Each of you go back home and work out where India currently sources its uranium from around the world," the Australian Associated Press quoted Foreign Minister Kevin Rudd as saying in a meeting with journalists.

"There is no problem in global supply," he said. "Let's just be very, very blunt about this."

"If you hear an argument from an Indian business person that the future of the civil nuclear industry in India depends exclusively on access to Australian uranium that is simply not sustainable as a proposition," Rudd added.

Liberal Party lawmaker Tony Abbott, opposition leader in the Australian House of Representatives, on Thursday urged the Labor Party government to eliminate the prohibition on uranium sales to India.

"If India is able to expand its nuclear program, obviously that does make a significant contribution to reducing Indian emissions," he said. "And I think that's something that the government really should rethink and rethink now" (Australian Associated Press/The Australian, Oct. 27).

Meanwhile, French Foreign Minister Alain Juppe last week said a potential decision by his country to sell weapon-sensitive nuclear fuel enrichment or reprocessing technology to India would not be affected an NSG move in June to prohibit the export of such systems to countries outside the Nuclear Nonproliferation Treaty (see GSN, Aug. 11).

"Our interpretation is that the agreement of 2008 (when the NSG made an exception for India) is still in vigor and we have no intention to change our relations with India on this point. And we support the membership of India to the NSG," Juppe said (Siddharth Varadarajan, The Hindu, Oct. 24).