Nuclear proliferation

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U.S.-India agreement threatens to fuel nuclear proliferation as well as arms race

http://search.japantimes.co.jp/cgi-bin/eo20070815a1.html
By SANDEEP PANDEY
Special to The Japan Times

PRINCETON, New Jersey — The United States is having a difficult time trying to justify the U.S.-India nuclear deal that will be brought into effect by the "123 agreement" that has just been concluded between the two countries.

The agreement is named after Section 123 of the U.S. Atomic Energy Act of 1954, titled "Cooperation With Other Nations," which establishes an agreement for cooperation as a prerequisite for nuclear agreements between the U.S. and any other country.

News of the 123 agreement was released just three days before the 62nd anniversary of the Hiroshima atomic bombing Aug. 6, causing consternation among people believing in a world free of nuclear weapons.

Despite imposing sanctions on India after its nuclear tests in 1974 and 1998, the U.S. is, for all purposes, according it the status of a nuclear weapons state under the Nuclear Nonproliferation Treaty. Washington is as willing to do business with India in nuclear technology and materials as it would be with any member of the NPT. As a nonsignatory state, India should not be accorded this privilege.

The U.S. seems more worried about the interests of its corporations than the far worthier cause of disarmament. It has once again proven that it does not mind throwing all national and international norms and laws to the wind to maintain its global hegemony.

With Nicholas Burns, the chief diplomat-architect of the 123 agreement, hinting at subsequent nonnuclear military cooperation with what he describes as "soon to be the largest country in the world," we are going to see the development of a unipolar world that poses a threat to smaller countries, especially those that fall out of favor with the U.S.

It is clear that U.S. wants to court India as a strategic ally with the objective of developing joint military capabilities and perhaps establishing military bases on Indian territory. The recent stopover of U.S. nuclear-powered aircraft carrier Nimitz (returning from its deployment to the Persian Gulf as a warning to Iran and possibly carrying nuclear weapons) at an Indian port in violation of New Delhi's stated policy of not allowing the transit of foreign nuclear weapons through its territorial waters, is a sign of things to come.

At the preparatory committee meeting for the 2010 NPT review conference held in May-June in Vienna, the New Agenda Coalition countries — Ireland, Brazil, Egypt, Mexico, New Zealand, South Africa and Sweden — along with Japan have urged India (and Pakistan and Israel) to join the NPT as nonnuclear weapons states.

Under the NPT, a nuclear weapons state is defined as one that has manufactured and exploded a nuclear weapon or other nuclear explosive device prior to 1967. It would be a misnomer to have India (as well as Pakistan and Israel) join the NPT as a nuclear weapons state.
So Washington is doing the next best thing; it says that by signing the deal with New Delhi it is bringing India into the nonproliferation regime as more of India's nuclear facilities will now be subjected to IAEA safeguards.

In negotiations India agreed to bifurcate its nuclear activity into clearly identified civilian and military categories, with the provision of the former being open to IAEA inspections. The U.S. agreed upon this India-specific deal as an exception because it contends that India has not contributed to proliferation.

By conducting nuclear explosions twice, however, India has violated the global nonproliferation regime and instigated Pakistan to do the same. India's brazen transgression also emboldened North Korea to withdraw from the NPT. India has consistently refused to sign the NPT, the Comprehensive Nuclear Test Ban Treaty or the Fissile Material Cut-off Treaty, outraging much of the international community and extracted significant concessions from the U.S. in the process.

Against the spirit of the Henry Hyde Act, if India decides to conduct another nuclear test or violates IAEA safeguards agreement, the U.S. will not immediately exercise its right of return of materials and technology. Instead it may ensure the continuity of India's nuclear fuel supply from other sources around the world after giving due consideration to the circumstances that prompted India's action.

The text of the 123 agreement has even gone as far as identifying France, Russia and Britain as potential suppliers in such an event. And even if the U.S. exercises the right of return, India will be suitably compensated. Moreover, the U.S. would support the creation of a strategic nuclear fuel reserve.

The issue that clinched the 123 agreement was India's offer to subject a new reprocessing facility — which will be built exclusively for this purpose — to IAEA safeguards in return for the consent to reprocess spent fuel, even though U.S. President George W. Bush is on record saying that enrichment and reprocessing are not necessary for a country to move forward with nuclear energy for peaceful purposes.

India will be free to maintain and develop its nuclear arsenal under the 123 agreement. In fact, with external resources available for its nuclear energy program, it will be able to use its internal resources to strengthen its strategic program. Eight nuclear reactors out of 22 and an upcoming prototype fast breeder reactor will remain dedicated for military purposes outside the purview of IAEA.

In short, India will enjoy all the benefits that a nuclear weapons state is afforded under the NPT, especially if the Nuclear Suppliers Group of 45 countries also grants similar concessions to India. The U.S. is going to lobby the NSG to engage in nuclear trade with India after it has helped India to sign an agreement with the IAEA on safeguards because it has to gain Congress' approval again before the deal will be considered final. It is intriguing that Australia, Canada, South Africa and others are all too willing to go along with the U.S. so that they can do business with India, giving up their long-standing commitment to nonproliferation.

Twenty-three U.S. lawmakers wrote a letter to Bush on July 25 expressing concern over India's growing ties with Iran, including in the domain of defense partnership. It must be remembered that India is considering a very important deal with Iran on the Iran-Pakistan-India gas pipeline.

India claims that the 123 agreement has changed the global order, and it is right. It has upset the nonproliferation regime. Globally and regionally it is going to lead to a new configuration of forces and possibly a new arms race.

The National Command Authority of Pakistan, which oversees the nation's nuclear program there has already expressed its displeasure at the 123 agreement and has pledged to maintain (i.e., upgrade) Pakistan's credible minimum deterrence. Islamabad believes the deal disturbs regional strategic stability and has asserted that it cannot remain oblivious to its security requirements.

A International Panel on Fissile Materials report predicts at least a four to five times increase in India's weapons-grade plutonium production rate. The present Indian stock is estimated to be sufficient for about 100 nuclear warheads. This is obviously alarming to Pakistan.

What India and Pakistan need is a mutually reassuring deal to suspend the nuclear arms race rather than something that will fuel the nuclear fire. The peace process undertaken by Indian Prime Minister Manmohan Singh and Pakistani President Gen. Pervez Musharraf is in the danger of being eclipsed by the U.S.-India nuclear deal.
Sandeep Pandey, a recipient of the Ramon Magsaysay Award for emergent leadership, is presently with the program on Science & Global Security, Woodrow Wilson School, Princeton University.

 

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Facts in support of Title:

Preventing a Nuclear Arms Race in South Asia: U.S. Policy Options
http://www.fourthfreedom.org/Applications/cms.php?page_id=54#
November 02, 2000

By David Cortright, Samina Ahmed

Recommendations
>The United States must unequivocally demand that India and Pakistan join the Non-Proliferation Treaty (NPT) as non-nuclear weapon states.
>The United States should retain punitive sanctions which target Indian and Pakistani institutions and policymakers responsible for their nuclear weapons programs.
>Targeted incentives should be provided that seek to diminish internal support for nuclear weapons in India and Pakistan.
>The United States should fulfill its obligation under Article VI of the NPT to achieve global nuclear disarmament.

U.S. nonproliferation policy faces a major challenge as an all-out nuclear arms race threatens to break out in South Asia. An Indian draft nuclear doctrine released by an officially constituted advisory panel to the Indian National Security Council on August 17, 1999 envisages a nuclear triad in which nuclear weapons would be delivered by aircraft, submarines and mobile land-based ballistic missiles. While it is not certain that New Delhi will opt for such broad capabilities, the current direction of policy is clearly toward nuclear weapons deployment. Since Pakistan's nuclear policy is India-centric and reactive in nature, the introduction of nuclear weapons and their delivery systems within the Indian armed forces would greatly increase the likelihood of a retaliatory Pakistani deployment. Operational nuclear weapons and delivery systems will result in a South Asian nuclear arms race that could have serious consequences for regional stability, the stability of the Middle East, and global peace.

For the past three decades, India and Pakistan have been engaged in a nuclear rivalry that is both a symptom and a cause of their bilateral discord. India and Pakistan have a long history of conflict including three wars and a long-standing territorial dispute over Kashmir. Each Indian and Pakistani step up the nuclear ladder introduces new tensions in their troubled relationship. India's decision to acquire nuclear weapons and to demonstrate its nuclear weapons capability in 1974 resulted in the Pakistani adoption of a nuclear weapons program. As their nuclear weapons capabilities grew, so did their mutual suspicions and animosity. In May 1998 as India and Pakistan held nuclear tests, abandoning nuclear ambiguity for an overt nuclear weapon status, relations between the two states were seriously strained. From May to July 1999, India and Pakistan came perilously close to war during a major military clash near Kargil in the disputed territory of Kashmir, a conflict that had the potential of escalating into a nuclear exchange. Since mistrust and hostility continue to mar their relationship, as the recent controversy over the hijacked Indian airliner underscored, the potential for a conventional war remains high. Nuclear weapons deployment will fuel a nuclear arms race between India and Pakistan and at the same time heighten the chances of an intentional or inadvertent nuclear exchange.

Since a nuclear arms race between India and Pakistan will further destabilize a violent and conflict-prone region, there is a pressing need for the U.S. to dissuade India and Pakistan from deploying nuclear weapons and to reverse their nuclear course. Beyond the immediate threats posed by such an arms race to the one-fifth of humanity which resides within South Asia, nuclear weapons deployment in India and Pakistan would also have a far-reaching impact on the nuclear dynamics in the region and beyond, threatening vital U.S. national security interests. The deployment of nuclear weapons and their delivery systems in Pakistan, for instance, would strengthen the position of nuclear advocates in neighboring Iran. The deployment of nuclear weapons and nuclear-capable ballistic missiles by India would influence China's nuclear doctrine. An India-Pakistan nuclear arms race could therefore result in a parallel Pakistan-Iran and Sino-Indian nuclear arms race. A South Asian nuclear arms race would also erode the global non-proliferation regime, embodied in the Non-Proliferation Treaty (NPT), undermining the confidence of signatory states in the treaty's ability to buttress their security. For all these reasons, the U.S. must prevent the incipient nuclear arms competition in South Asia from becoming an all-out arms race.

U.S. Policy and Nuclear South Asia
Some analysts and policymakers argue that the United States has failed to prevent nuclear proliferation in South Asia because of flawed policy directions and an over-reliance on sanctions as an instrument of U.S. influence. Since the initial U.S. emphasis on the rollback and elimination of Indian and Pakistani nuclear weapons capabilities failed to contain South Asian nuclear proliferation, these analysts contend, the U.S should accept nuclear weapons in South Asia and adopt the more realistic goal of "arms control," which merely seeks to limit their number and sophistication. According to this view, Washington should concentrate on encouraging India and Pakistan to refrain from a nuclear arms race and seeking ways to reduce the risk of nuclear war. At the same time, incentives should replace sanctions as the primary means of influence. U.S. interests would be best served, according to this view, by a policy of engagement with India and Pakistan that goes beyond the one-point agenda of nuclear non-proliferation.

To prevent India and Pakistan from embarking on a nuclear arms race, it is indeed important to examine the previous shortcomings of U.S. nonproliferation policy in South Asia and to identify alternative policy options. This must not mean, however, abandoning non-proliferation goals in favor of arms control. Any U.S. attempt to promote an India-Pakistan arms control regime is unlikely to succeed. Aside from the challenges posed by conventional and nuclear asymmetries between India and Pakistan and the integration of a reluctant China into a South Asian arms control arrangement, a formal India-Pakistan nuclear restraint regime requires at the very least the absence of war and a modicum of mutual trust. On the contrary, relations between India and Pakistan are shaped by an ongoing, decade-old, low-intensity conflict in the disputed territory of Kashmir and three near-war situations since the 1980s.
It is imperative for the United States to dissuade India and Pakistan from going further down the nuclear road. Washington cannot achieve this goal through the abandonment of non-proliferation, and the tacit acceptance of India and Pakistan's nuclear weapons status.

Proliferation may have occurred already in South Asia, but India and Pakistan can be convinced to cap, rollback and even abandon their nuclear weapons programs if the reasons that prompted them to acquire nuclear weapons are addressed. Indian and Pakistani decisions to acquire nuclear weapons were the outcome of cost-benefit analyses of the presumed benefits of nuclearization. The United States can play a major role in influencing the present and future directions of nuclear proliferation in South Asia by convincing Indian and Pakistani decision makers that the costs of nuclearization far exceed its benefits. This will require clearly defined non-proliferation goals and the use of the most appropriate instruments to reverse the nuclear directions of India and Pakistan.

In the past, U.S. policy goals and objectives were contradictory. As a result, the tools of U.S. policy, sanctions or incentives, failed to dissuade Indian and Pakistani decision makers from pursuing their nuclear ambitions. Cold War strategic considerations often took precedence over non-proliferation objectives. U.S. policy shifted from elimination to rollback and then to the current emphasis on a cap on Indian and Pakistani nuclear weapons capabilities. Each shift in U.S. policy emboldened India and Pakistan's nuclear advocates.

Washington's use of policy instruments was also ineffective. Sanctions and incentives only succeed if they are properly targeted and consistently applied. These preconditions were not present in South Asia. Washington's reluctance to sanction India after its nuclear test in 1974 motivated Pakistan to follow the Indian nuclear example. In the 1980s Washington again sent the wrong signal to Indian and Pakistani decision makers. The United States not only failed to sanction Pakistan for its nuclear development but showered billions of dollars of military aid on the Zia ul Haq dictatorship as part of the struggle against Soviet involvement in Afghanistan. In the 1990s Washington offered incentives to India and Pakistan to encourage nuclear restraint, despite accumulating evidence of each country's continuing nuclear weapons development.

Following the May 1998 nuclear tests in South Asia, Washington imposed mandatory sanctions on India and Pakistan and identified five benchmarks for their removal: curbs on the further development or deployment of nuclear-capable missiles and aircraft, Indian and Pakistani accession to the Comprehensive Test Ban Treaty (CTBT), participation in Fissile Material Cutoff Treaty (FMCT) negotiations, curbs on the transfer of nuclear technology and hardware, and an India-Pakistan dialogue on normalization of relations. The imposition of sanctions initially led to Indian and Pakistani concessions, including their declared willingness to accede to the CTBT and the resumption of an India-Pakistan dialogue. The United States subsequently failed to sustain these punitive measures, however. India and Pakistan backed away from their earlier pledges to join the CTBT, while their normalization dialogue became the casualty of the May-July 1999 undeclared war in Kashmir and the presence of hardline governments in both states.

With tensions in South Asia remaining high, the United States must clearly state its opposition to the presence of nuclear weapons in South Asia. Washington must demonstrate its resolve through targeted, consistently applied sanctions and incentives designed to influence the cost-benefit analysis of Indian and Pakistani nuclear decision makers. A failure to do so will result in the deployment of nuclear weapons and their delivery systems in India and Pakistan and the likelihood of the first use of nuclear weapons since 1945.

Policy Recommendations
In its policy toward India and Pakistan, the United States must unequivocally demand that India and Pakistan join the NPT as non-nuclear-weapon states. The current U.S. emphasis on South Asian nuclear restraint is being misconstrued or deliberately misrepresented by the Indian and Pakistani governments as a tacit acceptance of their nuclear weapons status.
In an amendment contained in the U.S. Defense Appropriations Bill, Congress has given the President indefinite waiver authority to lift military and economic sanctions, including those imposed automatically under earlier legislation on Pakistan and India. This waiver authority must be used judiciously. Broad and sweeping economic sanctions that adversely affect the weaker segments of Indian and Pakistani society should be removed. But Washington should retain those punitive measures that target Indian and Pakistani institutions and policymakers responsible for their nuclear weapons programs. These include curbs on the sale and supply of military hardware to Pakistan, the transfer of dual-use technology to India, and military and scientific exchanges with nuclear entities and actors in both states.
Targeted incentives should be provided, conditional on progress towards nonproliferation, that would seek to diminish internal support for nuclear weapons in India and Pakistan. These could include the partial forgiveness of India and Pakistan's external debt, increased U.S. assistance for social sector development, and enhanced U.S. support for developmental loans and credits from international financial institutions to India and Pakistan. Such assistance should be linked to concrete steps toward military and nuclear restraint.
In re-committing itself to the goals of non-proliferation, the United States should fulfill its own obligation, under Article VI of the NPT, to achieve global nuclear disarmament. This will encourage the advocates of denuclearization in both India and Pakistan and strengthen the norm against the development and use of nuclear weapons not only in South Asia but throughout the world.

What an irony that US has become Neuclear prolifirator.

 

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August 1, 2007
US-India Nuke Deal May Spark Asian Arms Race
http://www.antiwar.com/ips/deen.php?articleid=11380
by Thalif Deen

UNITED NATIONS - The U.S. decision last week to proceed with a controversial civilian nuclear deal with India has triggered strong negative responses from peace activists, disarmament experts, and anti-nuclear groups.

"The development of a nuclear/strategic alliance between the United States and India may promote arms racing between India and Pakistan, and [between] India and China," says John Burroughs, executive director of the New York-based Lawyers' Committee on Nuclear Policy.

The deal, he told IPS, also undermines prospects for global agreements on nuclear restraint and disarmament.

An equally negative reaction came from former UN Under-Secretary-General for Disarmament Affairs Jayantha Dhanapala: "It has the dangerous potential of triggering a nuclear arms race among India, Pakistan, and China, with disastrous consequences for Asian peace and stability and Asia's emerging economic boom."

But the Indian government argues that the nuclear agreement would neither destabilize the region nor prompt an arms race.

Nor will it trigger a "copycat deal" between Pakistan and China, India's national security adviser N.K. Narayanan told reporters last week.

"This agreement was not an excuse to enhance our strategic capabilities," he told a press briefing in New Delhi.

Zia Mian of the Woodrow Wilson School of Public and International Affairs at Princeton University says the United States sees strategic and economic benefits in the nuclear deal with India.

"But the people of India and Pakistan will pay the price, since the nuclear deal will fuel the India-Pakistan nuclear arms race," he added.

The deal will allow India to increase its capacity to make nuclear weapons materiel, and Pakistan has already said it will do whatever it can to keep up with India.
"This means nuclear establishments in both countries will become more powerful, drain even greater resources away from social development, and increase the nuclear danger in South Asia," Mian told IPS.

Nicholas Burns, the U.S. undersecretary of state who led the negotiations, denied the deal was a clear example of political double standards by an administration which has been trying to punish Iran for its nuclear ambitions but gives its blessings to India.

"This agreement sends a message to outlaw regimes such as Iran that if you behave responsibly, you will not be penalized," he told reporters last week.

India – along with Pakistan and Israel – has refused to sign the Nuclear Nonproliferation Treaty (NPT), but Iran has.

Called the "123 agreement," last week's nuclear deal will help create a civil nuclear enrichment facility in India, mostly with U.S.-made reactors and expertise.

Still, in a major speech in February 2004, U.S. President George W. Bush said that "enrichment and reprocessing are not necessary for nations seeking to harness nuclear energy for peaceful purposes."

"The details of the so-called '123 agreement' are still shrouded in secrecy but, on the basis of what has been disclosed, it is clear that the U.S.-India nuclear cooperation deal is an example of crude realpolitik trumping nuclear nonproliferation principles in total disregard of the NPT," Dhanapala told IPS.

He warned that it sends "a bad signal to the overwhelming majority of NPT parties who have faithfully abided by their treaty obligations."

Last week Burns told reporters that the deal would not act as an incentive for other countries to develop nuclear weapons outside the NPT.

Burroughs said that India made it clear when the NPT was negotiated that it could not accept a world divided into nuclear haves and nuclear have-nots and stayed out of the treaty.

"The problem with the deal is not that it acknowledges that India has nuclear weapons," Burroughs told IPS. "The problem is that both India and the United States are showing no signs of working towards the elimination of their arsenals together with other states possessing nuclear weapons."

Under the deal, neither country agrees to ratify the Comprehensive Nuclear Test Ban Treaty (CTBT).
"And while India agrees to work with the United States towards a treaty banning production of fissile materials for nuclear weapons, India is not required to stop producing materials for weapons now or to refrain from building additional weapons from existing material," he added.

Nor does India assume the obligation the United States has under the NPT, to negotiate in good faith cessation of the nuclear arms race at an early date and the elimination of nuclear arsenals.

In short, the deal seems to certify India as a member of a permanent nuclear weapons club, Burroughs declared.

Mian of Princeton University pointed out that the deal is also a clear violation of UN Security Council Resolution 1172, adopted on June 6, 1998, which was passed unanimously, and called upon India and Pakistan "immediately to stop their nuclear weapon development programs, to refrain from weaponization or from the deployment of nuclear weapons, to cease development of ballistic missiles capable of delivering nuclear weapons and any further production of fissile material for nuclear weapons."

That resolution also encouraged all states to "prevent the export of equipment, materials, or technology that could in any way assist programs in India or Pakistan for nuclear weapons," said Mian who along with M. V. Ramana co-authored "Wrong Ends, Means, and Needs: Behind the U.S. Nuclear Deal With India" in the January/February 2006 issue of Arms Control Today.

Another violation of UN resolution. And who is concerned about peace?

 

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^

Indian government argues that the nuclear agreement would neither destabilize the region nor prompt an arms race.

Nor will it trigger a "copycat deal" between Pakistan and China, India's national security adviser N.K. Narayanan told reporters last week.

India, U.S. Nuclear Accord May Harm Stability, Pakistan Says
By Paul Tighe
http://www.bloomberg.com/apps/news?pid=20601091&sid=arZqi9FQOyo0&refer=india#

India's nuclear energy agreement with the U.S. will have implications for stability in South Asia as it may lead to weapons production from unsupervised plants, Pakistan's government said.

Maintaining a strategic balance in the region ``would have been better served if the United States had considered a package approach for Pakistan and India,'' the National Command Authority, a body that includes President Pervez Musharraf, said yesterday in a statement, according to the official Associated Press of Pakistan.

India and the U.S. completed their accord last month to develop nuclear energy cooperation. India and Pakistan's civilian and military nuclear programs remain outside the 1970 United Nations Nuclear Non-Proliferation Treaty, which they haven't signed.

India and Pakistan tested nuclear devices in 1998. They have improved relations since 2003, restoring diplomatic, sporting and transportation links and improving cooperation on trade, combating terrorism and fighting drug trafficking.

Pakistan will ``act with responsibility'' in maintaining its nuclear arms program and will avoid an arms race, the National Command Authority said, according to APP.

The country will continue to work with the international community on efforts to prevent the proliferation of weapons of mass destruction, it said. The body consists of government, military and civilian leaders, including scientists, APP said.

``Pakistan will neither be oblivious to its security requirements, nor to the needs of its economic development, which demands growth in the energy sector,'' it said.

Energy Needs

Pakistan's government estimates the energy needs of South Asia's second biggest economy after India will more than double to 177 million metric tons of oil equivalent by 2020. India's atomic power now accounts for about 3 percent of its total electricity production.

Under the India-U.S. agreement, reprocessing of spent atomic fuel will be under the safeguards of the UN nuclear watchdog, the International Atomic Energy Agency.

India still has to reach an agreement with the IAEA for inspections of the reprocessing plant and the Nuclear Suppliers Group, a 45-nation forum dedicated to limiting the spread of atomic weapons, must approve the agreement. After that, President George W. Bush will submit the accord to Congress for approval, attempting to overcome concerns among lawmakers that India's nuclear weapons program would benefit.

The U.S. Congress in December passed legislation to allow the agreement to go forward. The bill reversed decades of U.S. policy that barred nuclear exports to India after it carried out its first nuclear bomb test in 1974. Pakistan's first test of a nuclear weapon was in May 1998.

To contact the reporter on this story: Paul Tighe in Sydney at ptighe@bloomberg.net

 

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Don't provoke Pakistan with uranium sales: Labor
By Jeff Waters
Don't provoke Pakistan with uranium sales: Labor - ABC News (Australian Broadcasting Corporation)

Pakistan has been warning India against suggestions it should resume nuclear weapons tests. (ABC TV)
Controversy surrounding the Government's plan to sell uranium to India was taken to a whole new level today, with Labor saying it could affect Australian troops in Afghanistan.

Opposition foreign affairs spokesman Robert McClelland says the uranium sales may offend Pakistan to such an extent that the country could withdraw its support for the war in Afghanistan and pull out of its battles with the Taliban on its side of the border.

And he says the logical conclusion of that is that Australian troops fighting in Afghanistan could be threatened by this new uranium policy.

Mr McClelland's statements were prompted by concerns voiced overnight by the Pakistani Government.

Through foreign ministry spokeswoman Tasnim Aslam, Pakistan has been warning India against suggestions that it should resume nuclear weapons tests.

"The resumption of nuclear tests by India would create [a] serious situation obliging Pakistan to review its position and to take action appropriate and consistent with our supreme national interest."

But Ms Aslam has also warned Australia, saying plans to sell uranium to India would tip the strategic balance in the region, and that Pakistan does not want a nuclear arms race.

Mr McClelland says selling uranium to India is a dangerous move.

"I think the decision of the Australian Government to sell uranium to India risks causing such resentment in Pakistan that they will withdraw or at least scale back the extent to which they are providing assistance in the fight against the Taliban and Al Qaeda militias that are based in Pakistan," he said.

"Granted, it hasn't been as enthusiastic as one would like, but we are nonetheless dependent upon the cooperation of Pakistan."

Mr McClelland says militias are launching attacks against Australian troops from within Pakistan, so it would be a mistake to get the Pakistani Government offside by selling uranium to India.

"This is a decision that in the longer term could potentially prejudice the safety of the Australian troops based in Afghanistan," he said.


Safeguards

But outside Cabinet today, federal ministers including Peter Costello were reinforcing previous statements that Australia would only sell uranium to India if safeguards are determined to be in place.

"I think the decision that Australia has made in relation to selling uranium to India will come with safeguards to ensure that it's not finding its way into weapons," he said.

"I think that those safeguards will be very important to ensure that uranium is put for peaceful purposes."

Controversy surrounding the Government's plan to sell uranium to India was taken to a whole new level today, with Labor saying it could affect Australian troops in Afghanistan.