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AUSTRALIA: Uranium Supply to India – Hot Election Issue

Stephen de Tarczynski

MELBOURNE, Nov 21 2007 (IPS) - Analysts say that the stalling in the Indian parliament of the India-United States civilian nuclear agreement could prove convenient for the opposition Australian Labor Party (ALP) – if it wins the Nov. 24 elections – to avoid supplying uranium to India.

“I see this as an interesting factor in the election campaign in Australia because one thing that was differentiating the government and Labor, of course, was that the government had announced it would negotiate the uranium export relationship with India and Labor had said that it wouldn’t,” says Rory Medcalf, director of the International Security program at the Sydney-based Lowy Institute for International Policy think-tank.

Prime Minister John Howard announced in August his government’s controversial decision to provide uranium to India, subject to certain pre-conditions being met. This decision – which reverses Australia’s long-held policy of supplying uranium only to countries that have signed up to the Nuclear Non-Proliferation Treaty (NPT) – is opposed by the ALP, whose leader, Kevin Rudd, has pledged to scrap the agreement if he is elected.

And with opinion polls consistently showing the ALP ahead of Howard’s governing coalition, Rudd may well be confirmed as the nation’s next prime minister.

Among such requirements as a safeguards agreement between India and the International Atomic Energy Agency (IAEA) and approval by the Nuclear Suppliers’ Group (NSG) of civil nuclear supply to India, one of the key pre-conditions of the Howard government’s uranium agreement with India is the successful completion of the 123 nuclear cooperation deal between India and the U.S.

However, Indian Prime Minister Manmohan Singh has so far failed in attempts to procure support from his Congress Party’s communist allies for the nuclear deal.

Subsequently, Australia’s agreement to supply uranium to India has also stalled. But with the ALP expected to return to power for the first time since 1996 by winning this weekend’s poll, a potentially damaging issue between two of the region’s leading democracies may well be averted.

“This sort of lets Labor off the hook,” Medcalf told IPS.

“If Labor wins the election, I think it was heading for a bit of a rift in relations with India, at least in its first year or so in office, because of this issue,” he says.

With India failing to ratify the 123 agreement, an ALP government would avoid the ramifications of a decision to quash the lucrative uranium export agreement.

According to Medcalf, it puts the ALP in the relatively comfortable position of being able to “simply say, look, this is a non-issue. Until there’s any movement on the U.S.-India deal then the rest of the world shouldn’t even consider the question of selling uranium to India.”

Dr Robert Ayson, director of studies at the Australian National University’s Strategic and Defence Studies Centre, agrees that India’s domestic opposition to its nuclear deal with the U.S. has let a potential ALP government “off the hook”.

“I think it has. I think they don’t have to make that call now, at least in the short term,” says Ayson.

“Because even the Howard Government would need to wait for that agreement between the Americans and the Indians to be completely locked up and solid and then for those other safeguards and approvals to come through, and then it would be willing to negotiate the sale of uranium to India,” he says.

“So, in a sense, Mr Rudd doesn’t have to make that choice,” Ayson told IPS.

But Prof. Joseph Camilleri, from La Trobe University, disagrees. He says that India-Australia relations are unlikely to be ruffled even if all pre-conditions are met and an ALP government maintains the party’s position not to export uranium to India. “I don’t think it would be unduly fussed. I don’t think this is something over which India’s going to go to the barricades about.”

India “knows that the programme on which it is engaged is highly unpopular internationally and quite a bit unpopular inside India itself, which is why it is having so much (of a) problem getting it through,” Camilleri told IPS.

Camilleri argues that it is “touch and go” as to whether India’s parliament passes the 123 nuclear agreement. “Indeed, it may well be that the present government collapses should it push it too hard,” he says.

The Lowy Institute’s Medcalf says that while India’s hitherto inability to ratify its nuclear deal with the U.S. should avoid an effect on Australia-India relations in the short term, he argues that due to India’s energy requirements, the topic is likely to be broached again.

“I think we’re going to come back to this issue in years to come because India has energy needs and it sees uranium as part of the mix,” Medcalf told IPS.

Medcalf adds that nationalist sentiments may also play a part. “The Indians feel extremely strongly about this issue, about what they see as the legitimacy of their nuclear aspirations,” he says.

Camilleri, on the other hand, argues that nuclear energy could soon be losing its attractiveness due to concerns about how much net energy nuclear power is actually able to produce.

“I think there is a big debate about to emerge around the actual contribution that nuclear energy can make to energy supplies. And I think now there is a body of evidence gradually coming to the fore that the rosy picture that’s been presented by the advocates of nuclear power is riddled with difficulty,” says Camilleri.

But with Singh still pressing for the parliament to adopt the Indo-US deal, it seems that India’s attraction to nuclear power has not waned. And despite the domestic opposition, India has begun talks with the IAEA on a safeguards agreement.

Additionally, China has indicated that, as a key member of the NSG, it may be willing to support civil nuclear cooperation with India.