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Australia will breach treaty if it sells uranium to India: NGO

Melbourne: Australia will be in breach of an international anti-nuclear treaty and also specific undertakings given by its Foreign Minister if it went ahead with plans to sell uranium to India, the world’s largest NGO working against nuclear proliferation has said.

Experts from the James Martin Centre for Non-Proliferation Studies (CNS) at the Monterey Institute of International studies in California pointed out a statement made by Foreign Minister Alexander Downer 10 years ago, in which he said Australia could sell uranium only to countries that had signed up to “full scope safeguards” on their nuclear plants, according to a report published in The Age

According to the NGO, the proposed sale to India would be subject to a regime that falls well short of “full scope safeguards.”

Under a draft U.S.-India deal, without which Australian sale to India would not go ahead, only civil nuclear plants will be subject to inspection, while military installations will not.

Experts from CNS said Australia would be in breach of the South Pacific Nuclear Free Treaty, signed in the 1980s, and pointed to an answer Mr. Downer gave 10 years ago to a parliamentary question on notice as proof.

Mr. Downer said in 1996: “Article 4 (a) of the South Pacific Nuclear Free Zone Treaty imposes a legal obligation not to provide nuclear material unless subject to the safeguards required by Article III.1 of the NPT [nuclear Non-Proliferation Treaty], that is full scope safeguards.”

Critics say the absence of inspection requirements for non-civil reactors in India means all material from them would potentially be available for weapons, increasing the risk of proliferation of material such as plutonium used in weapons. Monterey Institute’s Washington director, Leonard Spector, said Australia was trying to find “wriggle-room” so it could proceed with uranium sale.

“The question of whether Australia can legally export uranium to India is no longer in doubt. It cannot.” — PTI

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