By Stephen de Tarczynski
MELBOURNE, Oct 24 2007 (IPS)

Despite Australia’s agreement to provide uranium to India being put on ice as a consequence of the stalled nuclear deal between the United States and India, analysts say Australia is not just following the U.S. lead.

The Ranger Uranium Mine - Australia controls 40 percent of the world's supplies Credit: Wikipedia

In August, Australian Prime Minister John Howard announced his government’s controversial decision to allow uranium exports to India. This decision was at odds with Australia’s hitherto policy of not supplying uranium to countries which have not signed up to the nuclear Non-Proliferation Treaty (NPT), of which India is one.

But with India’s coalition government struggling to ratify the nuclear cooperation agreement between itself and the U.S. – the successful completion of which being a pre-condition for Australia to sell uranium to India – Australia’s own agreement with India has subsequently stalled.

"It’s not a matter of following the U.S. lead," a spokesman for Australia’s foreign minister, Alexander Downer, told IPS, pointing out that other stipulations were also required for Australia to export uranium to India.

Aside from the Indo-U.S. nuclear cooperation agreement, Australia also requires a safeguards agreement between India and the International Atomic Energy Agency (IAEA); an additional protocol on strengthened safeguards to be concluded by India; for the Nuclear Suppliers’ Group (NSG) to enable international civil nuclear supply to India; and for "satisfactory progress" to be made by India in its commitment to place designated civil nuclear facilities under IAEA safeguards.

"I think it’s not so much about the bilateral relationship with the U.S., it’s about the fact that Australia is not going to move on its own on this issue," says Medcalf.

"I don’t think decisions on (Australia’s) India policy are made purely on the basis of whatever the U.S. is doing. It’s just that on this particular uranium issue it would have been really quite extraordinary or quite bizarre for Australia to break ranks with the rest of the western world and suddenly start supplying uranium to India before others started to move," he says.

Medcalf argues that Australia is not the only country which can be perceived to be following the U.S. lead.

"If you look at the movement internationally on this issue, a lot of countries – especially a lot of the western European countries, for example – which have, like Australia, been very careful not to have nuclear commerce with India, were beginning to shift their positions as a result of the U.S., if you like, pushing through a change in the non-proliferation order," Medcalf told IPS.

The move by the U.S. to bring India back into the nuclear fold signalled an end to India’s status as a nuclear pariah.

"The establishment of the Nuclear Suppliers’ Group (in response to India’s 1974 testing of a nuclear bomb) and the sanctions on India that this is all about reversing were driven by the U.S. in the ‘70s," says Medcalf.

"They wouldn’t have happened if the U.S. hadn’t pushed them. So, we also followed the U.S. on that occasion, (but] in quite a different direction," he adds.

Medcalf views as problematic the perception of Australia’s relationship with India as being reliant on both countries’ U.S. ties.

"It is a relationship that has been seen to have been tied to our relationship with the U.S. and it doesn’t look like we’re making a lot of progress in developing a truly independent relationship with India," he says.

Medcalf says that India’s perception of Australia’s position as subservient to the U.S. on this issue – which Medcalf describes as "understandable" but "inaccurate" – is seen negatively by India.

"The funny thing about this is that it was seen as a negative from India’s point of view in the past because the U.S. was seen to be basically isolating India."

With Australia opening the way for uranium exports to India, Medcalf explains that Australia is again viewed as following the U.S.

"It’s a hard thing to shake off and difficult to see how we can shake it off," he says.

Ayson argues that the Australian and the U.S. governments see the world in similar, but not identical, ways.

"The Bush administration and the Howard government do see the world fairly similarly, but that’s not because the Howard government just follows in an automatic way," he says.

"It’s more like they’ve got a parallel sense of interests rather than the sense that, automatically, Canberra will follow where Washington will go," argues Ayson.

Ayson told IPS that both the U.S. and Australia, separately, see good relations with India as being in their respective national interests.

"I think that the Howard government feels that India is a rising great power in Asia," he says.

Australia, while signifying its support of India as a rising power by deciding to sell uranium to India, was wary of undermining its international standing, argues Ayson.

In order to keep its reputation intact, Australia looked "to use the American agreement with India as a kind of quasi-NPT, almost a bilateral NPT," says Ayson, arguing that Australia wanted multilateral support for India’s civilian nuclear program to give its own position more legitimacy.

According to Ayson, Australia’s willingness to supply India with uranium is based more on Asia’s "geopolitical reality" than economics.

For both the U.S. and Australian governments, "encouraging an active India in Asian politics, particularly at a time when you’ve got a rising China, particularly at a time when you’ve also got concerns about how the future balance of power in the region will play out, well that’s actually in our interest," he says.

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