AUSTRALIA: Uranium Supply to India – Hot Election Issue

Analysts say that the stalling in the Indian parliament of the India-United States civilian nuclear agreement could prove convenient for the opposition Australian Labor Party (ALP) — if it wins the Nov. 24 elections — to avoid supplying uranium to India.

“I see this as an interesting factor in the election campaign in Australia because one thing that was differentiating the government and Labor, of course, was that the government had announced it would negotiate the uranium export relationship with India and Labor had said that it wouldn’t,” says Rory Medcalf, director of the International Security program at the Sydney-based Lowy Institute for International Policy think-tank.
Prime Minister John Howard announced in August his government’s controversial decision to provide uranium to India, subject to certain pre-conditions being met. This decision — which reverses Australia’s long-held policy of supplying uranium only to countries that have signed up to the Nuclear Non-Proliferation Treaty (NPT) — is opposed by the ALP, whose leader, Kevin Rudd, has pledged to scrap the agreement if he is elected.

And with opinion polls consistently showing the ALP ahead of Howard’s governing coalition, Rudd may well be confirmed as the nation’s next prime minister.

Among such requirements as a safeguards agreement between India and the International Atomic Energy Agency (IAEA) and approval by the Nuclear Suppliers’ Group (NSG) of civil nuclear supply to India, one of the key pre-conditions of the Howard government’s uranium agreement with India is the successful completion of the 123 nuclear cooperation deal between India and the U.S.

However, Indian Prime Minister Manmohan Singh has so far failed in attempts to procure support from his Congress Party’s communist allies for the nuclear deal.

IPS News