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The ideal nuclear deal
Greg Sheridan, foreign editor | July 26, 2007
FEDERAL cabinet's National Security Committee is likely in the next few weeks to consider a submission from the Department of Foreign Affairs and Trade to change Australian policy so that we can sell uranium to India. This is very good policy indeed, and cabinet should endorse the submission.
News reports in the past 24 hours indicate the US and India have finalised details of their nuclear co-operation agreement. It will need to be ratified by the Indian parliament and the US Senate. The deal is a tremendous step forward for the cause of nuclear non-proliferation. It is also a development of profound importance for the geo-strategic equations in Asia.
Under the deal, India will separate its peaceful nuclear energy program from its nuclear weapons program. It will put 14 of its 22 nuclear power stations under the supervision of the International Atomic Energy Agency.
When the deal was first negotiated in March last year, the US official most closely involved, undersecretary of state Nick Burns, said the choice was not between 1 per cent of India's program or 100 per cent going under IAEA supervision, but between zero and 65 per cent.
I interviewed India's Prime Minister Manmohan Singh in his New Delhi residence just after US President George W. Bush had visited India and the two leaders had agreed the deal in-principle.
Singh told me he hoped Canberra would support the US-India agreement and that Australia would agree to sell uranium to India.
He said: "I hope Australia will be an important partner in this. We are short of uranium. We need to import uranium, and our needs will increase in years to come."
If the Howard Government decides to sell uranium to India, it will be a substantial change in Australian policy. Existing policy is to sell uranium only to nations that are signatories to the Nuclear Non-Proliferation Treaty. The NPT provides that only the five recognised nuclear weapons states - the US, Britain, France, China and Russia - can both have nuclear weapons and be sold nuclear technology and raw materials. Other states can be sold nuclear materials only if they do not possess nuclear weapons.
In the wake of the US-India deal, the IAEA and the Nuclear Suppliers Group, of which Australia is a member, are likely to carve out a special one-off provision for India.
Although the deal was originally agreed between Singh and Bush in March last year, it has had a tortured history in negotiation and may still face difficulties securing ratification. But it is so overwhelmingly in the interests of both nations that it is difficult to believe that now the details have been finalised, it ultimately won't proceed.
Why should Australia go ahead and sell uranium to India?
There are five clear reasons:
* The deal is good for nuclear non-proliferation. India has never proliferated nuclear technology to anybody, unlike China, to whom we are happy to sell uranium. It is certainly never going to give up its nuclear weapons. This deal puts India's enormous and growing peaceful nuclear power industry under IAEA supervision.
* The strategic imperative is overwhelming. This is a fundamental coming together of India and the US, with profound implications for Australia. Nothing could be more important in cementing India as a friend of US and Australian interests. If the deal were repudiated, it would be disastrous. The love-China-exclusively brigade in Australia is distressed that we may be so promiscuous as to embrace a giant, growing Asian democracy as well as the giant, growing Asian dictatorship, but in terms of our values and our interests, we would be foolish not to.
* The global warming considerations are substantial. China is the largest greenhouse gas emitter in the world. Its emissions grew by about 7per cent last year, while those of the US declined by more than 1 per cent. India is growing at Chinese rates. If global warming is real, it cannot possibly be tackled without involving China and India. Nuclear energy, which does not emit greenhouse gases, must be one part of that equation. If we won't sell uranium to India, then we are in effect trying to keep India as a nuclear pariah and cripple its nuclear energy sector. If global warming is a genuine problem, that is an irrational position.
* The bilateral Australia-India relationship will benefit enormously from a trade in uranium. This is the one way we will become truly strategically important to India. The rise of India is ultimately as important as the rise of China, in many ways more important because India is a democracy. There will not be another strategic opportunity like this to lock ourselves into the Indian development story.
* The economic returns to Australia, especially South Australia, could be very significant.
The move towards exporting uranium to India has been personally led by John Howard. Although Canberra will need to negotiate a full nuclear safeguards agreement with New Delhi, this should not be difficult. Similarly, Canberra cannot logically begin actual exports until the deal is accepted in both India and the US.
However, Howard's moves create acute problems for Kevin Rudd's Labor Party. The sentiment in the Labor Party will be overwhelmingly to oppose sales of Australian uranium to India. If Rudd allows this sentiment to prevail, he will be locking himself into an old-fashioned, indeed anachronistic, position, as the US-India deal will inevitably gain ultimate international approval.
In the meantime, Rudd will place himself in direct opposition to India's economic development, a position that could be electorally significant among Australia's substantial Indian minority. He will place himself in direct opposition to a key and constructive element of US policy towards Asia, and one which in the US is likely to enjoy bipartisan support.
This will revive fears that Rudd Labor is excessively tied to a China-first view of Asia, to the extent that it creates unnecessary friction with other Asian powers.
And, third, Rudd would be standing against the expansion of an Australian mining industry when already his greenhouse commitments must give miners, and the tens of thousands of people who earn their living from mining in Australia, some pause.
Selling uranium to India is good policy and good politics. We should proceed with it.
http://www.theaustralian.news.com.au/story/0,25197,22134207-5013460,00.html
Greg Sheridan, foreign editor | July 26, 2007
FEDERAL cabinet's National Security Committee is likely in the next few weeks to consider a submission from the Department of Foreign Affairs and Trade to change Australian policy so that we can sell uranium to India. This is very good policy indeed, and cabinet should endorse the submission.
News reports in the past 24 hours indicate the US and India have finalised details of their nuclear co-operation agreement. It will need to be ratified by the Indian parliament and the US Senate. The deal is a tremendous step forward for the cause of nuclear non-proliferation. It is also a development of profound importance for the geo-strategic equations in Asia.
Under the deal, India will separate its peaceful nuclear energy program from its nuclear weapons program. It will put 14 of its 22 nuclear power stations under the supervision of the International Atomic Energy Agency.
When the deal was first negotiated in March last year, the US official most closely involved, undersecretary of state Nick Burns, said the choice was not between 1 per cent of India's program or 100 per cent going under IAEA supervision, but between zero and 65 per cent.
I interviewed India's Prime Minister Manmohan Singh in his New Delhi residence just after US President George W. Bush had visited India and the two leaders had agreed the deal in-principle.
Singh told me he hoped Canberra would support the US-India agreement and that Australia would agree to sell uranium to India.
He said: "I hope Australia will be an important partner in this. We are short of uranium. We need to import uranium, and our needs will increase in years to come."
If the Howard Government decides to sell uranium to India, it will be a substantial change in Australian policy. Existing policy is to sell uranium only to nations that are signatories to the Nuclear Non-Proliferation Treaty. The NPT provides that only the five recognised nuclear weapons states - the US, Britain, France, China and Russia - can both have nuclear weapons and be sold nuclear technology and raw materials. Other states can be sold nuclear materials only if they do not possess nuclear weapons.
In the wake of the US-India deal, the IAEA and the Nuclear Suppliers Group, of which Australia is a member, are likely to carve out a special one-off provision for India.
Although the deal was originally agreed between Singh and Bush in March last year, it has had a tortured history in negotiation and may still face difficulties securing ratification. But it is so overwhelmingly in the interests of both nations that it is difficult to believe that now the details have been finalised, it ultimately won't proceed.
Why should Australia go ahead and sell uranium to India?
There are five clear reasons:
* The deal is good for nuclear non-proliferation. India has never proliferated nuclear technology to anybody, unlike China, to whom we are happy to sell uranium. It is certainly never going to give up its nuclear weapons. This deal puts India's enormous and growing peaceful nuclear power industry under IAEA supervision.
* The strategic imperative is overwhelming. This is a fundamental coming together of India and the US, with profound implications for Australia. Nothing could be more important in cementing India as a friend of US and Australian interests. If the deal were repudiated, it would be disastrous. The love-China-exclusively brigade in Australia is distressed that we may be so promiscuous as to embrace a giant, growing Asian democracy as well as the giant, growing Asian dictatorship, but in terms of our values and our interests, we would be foolish not to.
* The global warming considerations are substantial. China is the largest greenhouse gas emitter in the world. Its emissions grew by about 7per cent last year, while those of the US declined by more than 1 per cent. India is growing at Chinese rates. If global warming is real, it cannot possibly be tackled without involving China and India. Nuclear energy, which does not emit greenhouse gases, must be one part of that equation. If we won't sell uranium to India, then we are in effect trying to keep India as a nuclear pariah and cripple its nuclear energy sector. If global warming is a genuine problem, that is an irrational position.
* The bilateral Australia-India relationship will benefit enormously from a trade in uranium. This is the one way we will become truly strategically important to India. The rise of India is ultimately as important as the rise of China, in many ways more important because India is a democracy. There will not be another strategic opportunity like this to lock ourselves into the Indian development story.
* The economic returns to Australia, especially South Australia, could be very significant.
The move towards exporting uranium to India has been personally led by John Howard. Although Canberra will need to negotiate a full nuclear safeguards agreement with New Delhi, this should not be difficult. Similarly, Canberra cannot logically begin actual exports until the deal is accepted in both India and the US.
However, Howard's moves create acute problems for Kevin Rudd's Labor Party. The sentiment in the Labor Party will be overwhelmingly to oppose sales of Australian uranium to India. If Rudd allows this sentiment to prevail, he will be locking himself into an old-fashioned, indeed anachronistic, position, as the US-India deal will inevitably gain ultimate international approval.
In the meantime, Rudd will place himself in direct opposition to India's economic development, a position that could be electorally significant among Australia's substantial Indian minority. He will place himself in direct opposition to a key and constructive element of US policy towards Asia, and one which in the US is likely to enjoy bipartisan support.
This will revive fears that Rudd Labor is excessively tied to a China-first view of Asia, to the extent that it creates unnecessary friction with other Asian powers.
And, third, Rudd would be standing against the expansion of an Australian mining industry when already his greenhouse commitments must give miners, and the tens of thousands of people who earn their living from mining in Australia, some pause.
Selling uranium to India is good policy and good politics. We should proceed with it.
http://www.theaustralian.news.com.au/story/0,25197,22134207-5013460,00.html
