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Howard: No immediate change in policy towards India

P. S. Suryanarayana

Australia-China uranium deal `possible'

John Howard

SINGAPORE: Australian Prime Minister John Howard has hinted at the possibility of signing an agreement with China to meet its uranium requirements for nuclear power generation. Mr. Howard has ruled out similar sales to India at this stage.

A huge slice of about 40 per cent of the world's known reserves of uranium, which can be enriched to make nuclear weapons, is found in Australia.

Speaking to journalists after talks with visiting British Prime Minister Tony Blair in Canberra, Mr. Howard said on Tuesday "it is quite possible" that something about uranium supplies to Beijing "could be said or signed when the Chinese Premier (Wen Jiabao) visits Australia next week." Noting that the relevant discussions with the Chinese, which started at the beginning of 2005, had made "very good progress," and the negotiations "could be satisfactorily concluded" by the time of Mr. Wen's visit.

Mr. Howard said that negotiations with China, a signatory to the Nuclear Non-Proliferation Treaty, should not be seen as a model for uranium supplies to India.

However, he left the door open for future supplies of uranium to India. Mr. Howard said: "Whilst India is not a signatory to the treaty, ... her behaviour since exploding a [nuclear] device in 1974 has been impeccable" as a practitioner of non-proliferation. Cautioning that "you should not think there is going to be an immediate change of [Australian] Government policy in relation to India," he said Canberra would "take one step at a time" in resolving the issue of uranium sales to New Delhi.

Noting that the recent nuclear energy agreement between the United States and India was "good," he said Australia would send an official delegation to New Delhi "in the next few weeks" to discuss "the form and the substance" of that accord. The same team would thereafter travel to Washington for talks with the U.S. administration on the same subject.

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