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Sydney: Australia on Wednesday backed away from indications it might change policy and sell uranium to nuclear power India, as North Korea's atomic test raised fears of a regional arms race. “We're not planning to sell uranium to India,” Foreign Minister Alexander Downer said flatly in a speech to an energy security conference.
Last month, Downer said Australia was considering whether to match a controversial US nuclear deal with India to allow Canberra to sell uranium to the New Delhi government.
He said then that while cutting a deal with nuclear-armed India was not on the cards for the moment, it might happen in the future, despite the fact that New Delhi has not signed the nuclear non-proliferation treaty (NPT).
Australia, which holds 40 percent of the world's known uranium reserves, agreed earlier this year to sell the nuclear fuel to China, which has signed the NPT.
Prime Minister John Howard, a close ally of the US, also said last month that the government was considering changing its policy of refusing to supply uranium to countries that have not signed the NPT.
But North Korea's atomic bomb test may have dealt a serious blow to the passage of the deal between India and the US on civilian nuclear energy, analysts said.
The US Congress gave its thumbs-up to the deal in July but the Senate is yet to vote on it, and North Korea's test is expected to provide ammunition for opponents of the arrangement.
If the US-India deal falls through, it will almost certainly have a knock-on effect on Australia's attitude to supplying uranium to New Delhi.
“We've made no decision to sell uranium to India,” Downer told reporters Wednesday. “We have no plans to reconsider the issue at all.”
Australia's deal with China involves 20,000 tonnes of uranium a year from 2010 to meet the country's growing energy demands.
Canberra said it was satisfied that safeguards were in place to ensure that China would not use the fuel in nuclear weapons.
