It is Kaushik Kapisthalam, rather than the critics of the decision to sell Uranium to India, who is missing the point.

We should not be selling Uranium to China, Russia, Pakistan, the US or India. Australia should use its influence on the world stage to salvage what good the Nulear Non-proliferation Treaty is still able to achieve, and not act to further undermine it.

The fact that this Goverenment is prepared to sell Uranium to a nuclear-armed state such as India, further confims (as if any more confirmation is needed in the wake of the Iraq War, the AWB scandal and its determination to continue warming the planet with Australian coal) that it is utterly devoid of morality or any sense of responsibility.

They will sell anything to anybody.

"...an Australian refusal to supply uranium to India using the NPT alibi after Canberra's generous offer to China would be seen ...as an affront to a rising India"

Do we really want to supply uranium to a nation that is so easily "affronted"?

Seriously though, India's failure to sufficiently feed its own children while investing in nuclear weapons and a space programme is an affront to humanity.

Not that it makes much of a difference. The fact that 50% of India's children are already malnourished, combined with uncontrolled population increase, rapid drawing down of its water table, desertification and implications for agriculture of rising oil/fertilizer prices, decreasing phosphate availability and receding Himalayan glaciers mean that India is on a shortcut to starvation, chaos and collapse. They will not be much of a long term market for Australia's uranium.

I applaud Kapisthalam for this brilliant piece.

Daggett:

Sadly it is YOU who is missing the point. What Kapisthalam is saying that when Aus is selling Uranium to the likes of UK and US, it has no reason not to sell to India. Either you sell to all or sell to none if it is a matter of principle. Anything else is hypocrisy.

michael_in_adelaide:

You are a racist. You know not that a large part of India's space programme is used for rural education, irrigation and emergency communication. India's population growth is largely controlled and poverty, malnutrition etc are improving steadily. What you need to answer is why small White nations like France and UK, whose populations are declining and who are no longer global powers, need nuclear weapons. We don't need your patronizing nonsense.

Overall, Kapisthalam has pointed out the clear and present hypcrisy behind Australia's "NPT or else" stand. The NPT itself is a racist treaty that has sought to preserve a failed world order and forced nuclear terror on many nations. Sanctimonious people in the West have sought to lecture thrid-world countries on the dangers of nukes while sitting under a cushy nuclear shield and conducting tests on aboriginal land. Shame on all of them!

Michael.. don't worry.. those malnourished children will have a better diet when their parents find exployment in the DMIC - a 100 billion (Japan is financing 30%) USD corridor from Delhi to Mumbai comprising townships, high-speed freight lines and nine 200 sq km SEZs dedicated to manufacturing, chemicals and engineering, three ports and six airports all powered by light water reactors loaded with Uranium from Australia, Canada, Russia, Niger, Kazakstan...

As an America-based opinion peddler, you have to suspect that Kaushik Kapisthalam would help his cause better if he was a bit more careful with his labels.

Talk of "a chorus of opposition to this decision, from nuclear non-proliferation hard liners to dogmatists who seek to keep India confined to an India-Pakistan box" is not going to win friends among the many Australians who do not share his views.

Much of the opposition is popular. People are understandably cautious about increasing the nuclear capability of countries that are willing to turn it into weaponry. Refusal to sign the NPT may seem justified in India, or in the realist corridors of strategic studies institutes, but not to most people in Australia.

Just like the Iraq invasion, Howard's decision is against the majority opinion, not just shrill latte-sipping elites. Just like that invasion, the majority seem to have made the safer call.

On second thoughts: perhaps his article was intended to inflame, not persuade. If so, it was published in the wrong forum.

http://news.bbc.co.uk/2/hi/south_asia/6957957.stm

Mr Abe has arrived at the head of a major business delegation, including chief executives of Japanese companies such as Toyota, Mitsubishi, Canon and Hitachi.
Both governments will announce a plan to jointly develop an ambitious manufacturing and freight corridor between Delhi and the financial capital, Mumbai, rather like that between Tokyo and Osaka.
It will include a high-speed railway line, several ports and airports.
But perhaps the most significant aspect of the visit is development of a strategic partnership.
Mr Abe favours an alliance between Japan, Australia, the United States and India, something that is of concern to China.

http://in.news.yahoo.com/070820/48/6joyd.html

Government sources confirmed that the US, Japan, Australia and Singapore navies would be conducting war games in the Bay of Bengal, 100 nautical miles west of Andamans and 500 miles east of the Indian shores, during September 4-9. Undaunted by the Left parties' threat to protest against these exercises, the Manmohan Singh Government has given a clear signal to the Indian Navy to go ahead with 15 of its surface combatants including INS Viraat, India's sole aircraft carrier, for the war games.

I totally agree with the post by daggit.
I also believe that we should forget the concept of nuclear energy. The risks are by for to great. Call me naive, but it seems to me that most of the money spend on various 'war efforts' and 'war on terror' could be spend on research into making current alternative energy sources more efficient and economical.
It is plain insanity to increase Uranium sales. Not only to India, but all countries. If anything we should stop sales to everybody.

john frum,

All that development requires ENERGY. You would have to have been on holiday on the moon to have missed hearing that the world is facing an energy crisis. (The crisis has already begun in the developing world.) Nuclear power will not provide transport energy or drive the industrial agriculture which India's economic ruling elite fantasizes. The DMIC is a daydream that will evaporate as energy prices continue to escalate.

BronzeSword,

Calling me a racist is easy. Answering my arguments is the hard part. In what way is India's population growth "largely" controlled? World grain production has plateaued but India is far from self-sufficient. Where will it get its increased food requirements from as its own agriculture collapses though lack of water and fertilizer?

As far as the uranium debate is concerned, I believe Australia should first reconcile what its policy on nuclear energy is.

It seems we set arbitrary limits on uranium mining with very limited facilities to allow us to process the material. Australia seems intent on straddling incompatible ideologies in an effort to delay the formation of any concrete decision.

It is time to decide whether we are or are not a nuclear country.
If we are not, do we continue to be a mine for those countries that are?

Ideologically, for many, the answer would be no. It would be a hypocritical stance to say otherwise. But what of nuclear medicine? Do we cherry pick what we want and see as beneficial, and naively assume that all the bad stuff won't come home to roost because we have, ideologically, distanced ourselves from the broader nuclear issues?

Pragmatically, for the sake of the economy the answer would be yes. We are a capitalist democracy and enjoy first world living conditions. These standards do not come from commerce that has been starved by over zealous ethical or moral restrictions over the last 220 years.

It is time for a decision one way or the other.

THE BIG END OF TOWN WANTS NUCLEAR ENERGY - WE NEED IT FOR WEAPONS

Craig

My sentiments exactly.

The problem with uranium in Austraalia is that we presume the nuclear power argument must be resolved. I argue that Australia should ditch the power facade and move directly to our uranium being used for Australian nuclear weapons production.

To make it more simple let's recognise nuclear energy for what it is - an enormous engineering project, of dubious economic efficiency and consumer benefit, that will profoundly benefit the US centric Big End of Town (BET).

- we have enough coal and gas in Australia (and solar is forever) to provide for Australia hundreds of years so why go for nuclear power?

- as the Government appears to be forcing the whole nuclear energy concept you can BET that taxpayers/public money will ultimately pay for the grand designs of the Government and its BET cronies. Public money has always been poured into civil nuclear projects.

Why holdup a perfectly viable nuclear weapons project while BET (and its captive Governments) uses public money to force feed us with overly expensive nuclear energy?

So I say:
- continue to sell the uranium to US, UK and France
- maintain the sales agreement with China
- sell to India
- sign the expected sales agreement with Putin/Russia at APEC in 2 weeks

But use the Government skimmed financial benefits for Australian nuclear weapons development (or purchase).

We need to adjust to THIS world in which more countries have nukes by building our own nuclear defences. We don't need to continue to follow the orders of American Presidents or the plans of big (nuclear energy) business to force profits from taxpayers.

Pete
http://spyingbadthings.blogspot.com/

Did anyone else notice that free trade talks are now underway with India - a notoriously closed market?

Australia should sell Uranium to India- a win-win situation. Period.

The minority opposed to it - I challenge them to stop this sale.

There are several aspects to this issue.

- The (heavily flawed) NPT - but it's all we've currently got, hence the need for a N Weapons Convention as part of the disarmament process
- That India is not a signatory to the NPT
- That, under the NPT, India is a Non-Weapons State
- That Australia is well in a position to exert pressure for India (and other nations) to ratify the Comprehensive Test Ban Treaty
- It contravenes the Treaty of Raratonga and could well spur Pakistan/China nuclear deals
- That all military facilities remain EXEMPT from the safeguards system
- That India has admitted (as did China) that it "needs" our uranium so as to use its existing reserves for military use.

"Given India's need to build up our minimum credible nuclear deterrent arsenal as fast as possible, it is to India's advantage to categorize as many power reactors as possible as civilian ones to be refueled by imported uranium and conserve our native uranium fuel for weapons grade plutonium production." - K. Subrahmanyam, former head of the India's National Security Advisory Board.

And lastly, yes it IS hypocritical - we shouldn't be mining and exporting uranium at all when we could be world leaders in clean, ecologically sustainable and safe energy sources.

http://www.votenuclearfree.net
http://www.icanw.org

India is ready to sign the NPT anytime but ONLY as a nuclear weapons state.

pakistan , north korea, iran and china should be placed under sanctions for illegal proliferation

> exert pressure for India .. to sign the CTBT

In 1965, US President Lyndon B. Johnson was informed that massive crop failures in India had forced millions of people to the brink of famine.

The President responded by cutting off U.S. economic and food aid.

He instituted a "Short Leash" food aid policy where he personally would approve the release of surplus PL.480 US grain shipments, on a month to month basis.

He hoped to "persuade" India to settle the Kashmir dispute (in favor of Pakistan) and to halt its nuclear weapons development program (ordered by then Indian PM Lal Bahadur Shastri right after the first Chinese nuclear test).
It was Shastri, when he discovered that the US had shipped poor quality wheat, had earlier refused PL.480 grain. He asked his wife not to cook evening meals and proceeded to ask the Indian people to go hungry once a day.

India neither gave up Kashmir nor halted its bomb program. Shastri's successor Indira Gandhi ignored Richard Nixon's many threats, including sending the USS Enterprise carrier battle group into the Bay of Bengal. Nixon's SoS, Kissinger even tried to persuade the Chinese Premier Chou En-Lai to attack India in 1971, to relieve the pressure on Nixon's good friend, the Pakistani dictator Yahya Khan, then engaged in genocide in what is now Bangladesh. Indira finally gave permission for a test in 1974.

In 1998, Madeleine Albright also sought to pressure India to sign the CTBT. Many threats were made, sanctions imposed etc.

I think you are overestimating how India will respond to foreign pressure.

India will probably sign the CTBT in the manner that France did... when its simulation and subcritical test capabilities make actual testing no longer necessary, it will conduct some full yield proof tests to gather simulation data, receive more data from the US, then sign the treaty, with requisite noises about disarmament and world peace. It will sign a future FMCT when, like the P5, it has accumulated a surplus of fissile weapons grade material

John, not one of the points you raised gives any reason for Australia to export uranium to India.

http://www.votenuclearfree.net
http://www.icanw.org

atom1,

You are wrong and john is right.

Besides, Uranium to India has already been decided upon and there is nothing you can do about it. The war has been won by the pro-India Australians. Stop being a loser and grow up.

Is Australian national security helped by a refusal to sell India fuel?

Did Downer's criticism in 1998 achieve anything? India just ignored it. When Clinton changed tack, Australia was left acting more royal than the king, then scrambled to adjust its stance.

Consider that Jakarta has approached Delhi to buy cruise missiles. Is the possession of supersonic anti-ship and land attack cruise missiles by Australian neighbors desirable? Indonesia also wants to "buy tanks, warships and heavy ammunition" and have India supply spares and maintain the Su-30 Flankers that Jakarta has just bought from Russia (India has a license that allows it to manufacture the fighters).

The Indian DAE is planning to export heavy water reactors to Cambodia, Indonesia, Thailand and Vietnam. These units can be refueled while online. They can produce weapons grade Plutonium and Tritium.

How would India respond to Australian concerns on these matters?
Would an Australia that actually engaged with India be treated differently to one that just criticized and made demands?

THE PROBLEM:

pakistan , north korea, iran and china should be placed under sanctions for illegal proliferation.

errr "Illegal"?.... by who's law-certainly NOT any that these countries are obliged to.

THE SOLUTION: sorry, there isn't one. ( but see *@* below)

SO.. Autralia will not only sell uranium, but will go nuclear.

We will otherwise just wallow in our self righteousness and indulge in mutual back slapping and self congratulation in out of the way, backwater, 3rd world cafes sipping out latte's as if we actually 'matter' in the big scheme of things. Sheesh...there are more refugees in the world than our whole population.

I have to smile at the infantile, historical and philosphical naivity of those 'do-gooders' who think some huge 'Leftoid magician in the Hegelian sky' is going to drag out a massive socialist white rabbit solution to all these issues from his Marxist hat.....aaaah the dialectic.

*@* well..there is a solution, but it's the one few want and most don't recognize..
can you guess what it is ? Its a solution to our human dilmemna as well as international relations.

"The way is broad, and the gate is wide which leads to destruction and MANY are they that follow it"

Hmmmm who said that ?

Why is the IAEA's ElBaradei an enthusiastic supporter of the deal? The IAEA after all will have to negotiate an "India specific" safeguards system (not the INFCIRC153 it uses with NNW states). It will be kept out of many facilities (no full scope). Its inspectors will have to visit reactor complexes where they may safeguard reactor #1, #2 and #4, but may not even enter #3 because it is making bomb material.

For the IAEA, simply getting India into the system is a big plus.
Unlike, say, Pakistan or China, India does not accept technical assistance from the IAEA. India does not even permit IAEA safety inspections.

India is the only non-NPT member that builds both Uranium enrichment plants and Fast Breeder reactors (along with Plutonium reprocessing plants), that builds its own Superconducting Tokamaks for fusion research, that has laser enrichment and laser implosion research facilities. Besides designing thermonuclear weapons, it is building a nuclear submarine (sea trials next year according to a report yesterday) and has already tested SLCMs and the launcher for a SLBM. It is the only non-NPT member that has a space program capable of reaching geosynchronous orbit. It is building formidable lift capability - 10 tons to earth orbit. Early next year an Indian rocket will send a probe to orbit the moon and map its surface for mineral deposits.

Dr. ElBaradei sees all this "technology of concern" and wants India inside the system.

"It's better to have the camel inside the tent pissing out, than outside the tent pissing in." - President Lyndon B. Johnson.

There is a lot being made about the "islanding" of military designated facilities where the IAEA will be forbidden to enter. India is actually physically moving and shutting down civilian research reactors inside these facilities to avoid having IAEA inspectors even enter the grounds. This is actually not as bad as it sounds. The IAEA teams include inspectors from many nations. Do we really want inspectors from, say, Brazil or Indonesia or Nigeria, inside a bomb making facility or a bomb design and test facility?

As with uranium, its use in in the hands of the user...like a car can do a range of funtions from taking life to transporting...albeit potential of uranium to take vast amount of life is truly exceptional...

So, I think it comes to common morality and balance of a society to sustain itself and among others...and here India has a problem...

Firstly, a country of ordinary decent people as a whole common consciousness would want to minimize the gap between the rich and poor...not only has it got worse but the acceptance of desparity is the most concerning...yes appropriate lip service and actions occur time to time...but little dend in daily reality to the desparately poor...and mix this with almost reverence of rich and how they became that way...to which there is a general aspiration towards...imbalances the most fundamental element of sustainable society...money especially rules in India...if thats changed to person and quality of life and sinse of happiness...then there is less to worry about...and become little different to any other country...

yes India is begining to roll in real money...but ask any good Indian where most of this money ends up...there is a strangle hold between politics, established old business families and judiciary...more that usual comparitively...so rich get richer and poor poorer...and we all know where this cycle naturally lead to...

A graphic example...Indian army foot soldiers are mainly poor villagers...and there is markedly less respect for the little they have by commanders(educatated richer families)...which includes their life...the only valuable thing left to give the government for money...Golden Temple fiasco there was a long exposed walkway over pond to isolated central temple building where seikh well-armed militants defending it...the foot soldiers were sent wave after wave without protection and mowed down that Im told the militants finally stopped firing because they could not carry on the bloodshed...then they were shot on site...

this is one of Indias biggest problem...how it treats its own...and worries the rest of us...

Sam

Ecotrin ("You are wrong and john is right. "Besides, Uranium to India has already been decided upon and there is nothing you can do about it".)

Mmmm. Strong argument there. And wrong.
http://www.votenuclearfree.net

(Ecotrin: "Stop being a loser and grow up".)

Wow, the usual need to revert to that? References?
No need to get personal, you twit. And how many years of research and non-vested interest work have YOU done to help make our world a safer place?

Referenced Briefing Paper: Uranium, India and the Nuclear Non-Proliferation Regime:
http://www.energyscience.org.au/BP18%20India.pdf

And on Safeguards:
Australian safeguards have been eroded by successive governments. The Director-General of the International Atomic Energy Agency has repeatedly pointed to numerous flaws and limitations of the safeguards system yet the Australian Government persists with the fiction that safeguards ‘ensure’ that uranium exports will not be used in nuclear weapons.
http://www.energyscience.org.au/FS11%20Nuclear%20Safeguards.pdf

- Professor Richard Broinowski, University of Sydney, former Australian Ambassador to Vietnam, Republic of Korea, Mexico, the Central American Republics and Cuba and author of Fact or Fission — the Truth about Australia’s Nuclear Ambitions (Melbourne: Scribe, 2003).

http://www.votenuclearfree.net

> minimize the gap between the rich and poor.

That will take decades more. There is no magic wand that can be waved to raise people from poverty. It requires industrialization and urbanization. How long did it take, say Ireland, after its independence to raise living standards? Was there a immediate redistribution of wealth after the British left Ireland? Did everyone suddenly have enough to eat? Did everyone get decent housing?

India's flirtation with Socialism has hobbled its economy and condemned hundreds of millions to poverty. Only now are things changing.. and the Indian Left is still resisting reforms, especially ones that would facilitate low skill manufacturing...

Lee Kwan Yew commented that he admired the goals of Indian Socialists. But unlike them, he realized that one has to first bake a cake before one can share it.

atom1,

you sound and act like a twit. you are a person of less than modest intelligence. Listen to the rocket scientists in Australia and India. Look at John Frums's brilliant arguments. So far they have gone over your head. All you do is post links to outside sites, because u cannot formulate your own arguments. And your posts just repeat the same old tired mantras. Say something new, She-man !

Australia is a democracy and we have decided to sell Uranium. The more you whine, the more Uranuim we will sell.

I have done enough work for peace. But looking at your hate filled posts, I will now switch over to working for the pro-war hawks - at least they give respect to their own folks, unlike the anti-nuke nitwits. (BTW, the reason people join militant Islam is because they crave respect from their own organisation.) By demeaning others, you are not going to change their minds, but only make them more steely resolved.

I challenge you to a telephone debate on selling Uranium to India. I will beat you hollow. If you have guts, give me your number. And we can record the debate. I doubt though that u will take up this challenge.

ecorin,

Stop taking the testosterone shots. Have a Bex and good lie down instead! Your macho posturing and aggressive language impresses no one.

Heh, heh, heh.....

The very fact that I got noticed and a response (even tho' negative) means I was successful. The idea is to force a public debate and to sell more Uranium, lots more. Long live Australia.

Expecting more replies......

Heh, heh, heh....

> It contravenes the Treaty of Raratonga

No it does not. From Article 4 of said treaty:
"Each Party undertakes .. not to provide .. special fissionable material to any non-nuclear-weapon State unless subject to the safeguards required by Article 111.1 of the NPT"

NPT Article III.I refers to "non-nuclear-weapon State Party to the Treaty"

Now, India is NOT a state party to the NPT. It never signed it.

From the testimony of Condi Rice to the US Senate:

"Article III(2) establishes the basis under which NPT parties may engage in nuclear cooperation with safeguarded facilities in countries that are not parties and do not have full-scope safeguards"

Note the "not parties" bit.

She continues:

"This conclusion is also supported by the practice of the parties to the NPT. The U.S. and Canada engaged in nuclear cooperation with India before and after the NPT entered into force. The supply of fuel under facility-specific (INFCIRC/66) safeguards agreements was understood to satisfy our obligations under the NPT. Even after India’s 1974 detonation, fuel was provided to India’s safeguarded Tarapur reactors by the United States, France, and Russia."

"nothing in the NPT, its negotiating history, or the practice of the parties supports the notion that fuel supply to safeguarded reactors for peaceful purposes could be construed as “assisting in the manufacture of nuclear weapons” for purposes of Article I. "

"nuclear cooperation under safeguards does not fundamentally differ from other forms of energy cooperation (e.g., oil supply, clean coal technology, alternative fuels). All such energy assistance would arguably relieve India of its reliance on domestic uranium for energy production. Yet such energy assistance clearly could not be viewed as assisting India in the manufacture of nuclear weapons."

Ashley Tellis demolishes the notion that supplying India with Uranium will free up domestic supply for weapons.

http://www.carnegieendowment.org/files/atomsforwarfinal4.pdf

Read the part about low burnup of a portion of the CANDU core and the amount of material it would require

Ecotrin you don't know me at all, a phone debate between us may satisfy your ego, nothing more, and the "outside" links I supplied are non-vested interest, referenced facts, so read the Forum rules and stick to the issue, as you only look foolish.

You say "Australia is a democracy and we have decided to sell Uranium", yet polls on this issue have consistently shown otherwise.

28/3/06 Should Aust export uranium to China?
nine msn: 64% (36,938 votes) No
Herald Sun 79.8% No

Should Aust export uranium to India?
The Age: 53% No
ABC: 84% No

14/5/06 Do you support uranium leasing deals?
The Age: 67% No

15/5/06
Should Aust accept N-waste from future customers?
nine msn: 85% (50,822 votes) No

22/5/06 Is Aust ready for nuclear power?
The Age: 57% (2083 votes) No

30/5/06 Newspoll:
66% of Australians oppose new uranium mines and 78% of ALP voters are opposed to new mines or uranium mining altogether.

5/6/06 Do you support new N reactors?
Herald Sun:
65.3% No
34.7% Yes

Would you support a nuclear reactor near you?
Yahoo:
66% (3,185 votes) No
31% (1,485 votes) yes

29/12/06
Should Australia use nuclear power to generate electricity?
SMH:
Yes, it's cleaner than coal - 46%
No, it's too risky - 54% (Total Votes: 8,176)

Ecotrin: "The more you whine, the more Uranuim we will sell".

Gee, I had no idea it was all so dependent on me.

John, without having read the full text of the Treaty of Raratonga (Pacific Nuclear Free Zones), Fran Kelly's Radio National program featured an interview with Leonard Spector - Deputy Director, James Martin Centre for Non-Proliferation Studies, Monterey Institute for International Studies, California.
He said, among other things, that the Howard Government's decision to sell Australian uranium to India would breach the Treaty of Rarotonga. The interview:
http://www.abc.net.au/rn/breakfast/stories/2007/2006382.htm

and Australia is bound to uphold treaties it has ratified under the Article XVIII of the Vienna Convention on Treaties:
http://www.oas.org/legal/english/docs/Vienna%20Convention%20Treaties.htm

http://www.votenuclearfree.net

Spector et al are 'bush lawyers' in the field of International Law.

There is a good reason why bush lawyers aren't allowed into a real courtroom... they read a bit of the odd law book and get all sorts of notions in their head. They are ignorant of rules, precedent, customary practices and tradition. They also haven't read the rest of the book.

They've been claiming it violates the NPT as well. They seek to reinterpret the NPT as requiring full scope safeguards for non-parties... something it clearly doesn't. Raratonga is based on the NPT

atom1,

glad to see more whining from you.

the more you reply to our (pro-proliferation) posts, the more energised we become. please give us more importance by showering more and more attention on us.

all the fellow australians in my large friend circle are pro-Uranium sale. So much for you poll.

private entrepreneurs in Australia (funded by China) are now mining for Uranium and selling overseas. can you stop them, you powerless whiner.

u chickened out of the debate for some spineless reason....you know you have no valid points.

Dare you to stop Uranium sale to India.....heh, heh, heh....

Reading an article feels some uncertainty about author’s interpretation of the NPT.

As till date known, neither development of own nuclear capabilities but limits for transferring nuke-related technologies / equipment and compliance with international nuke-related legislation demanding a particular transparency of nuke activities and objects for international inspections, constitute the most of the NPT.

Intended uranium supply to China on prices discounted already heavily by national-liberal "economic management experts"-of-a-day hardly sustains a necessity for further wasting a precious national resource to please India or any other forward-thinking country building the sovereign future on modern energy-producing technologies while returning radioactive pollution to Australia.

So far, spells of returning to the nuke policies of the sixties as morally unacceptable U-turn, convinced me a little in vitality of U-supply-as-control-over-nukes system because nothing is transparent since NPT had been minded.

For my part - I think the article is well written.

However, I do not support uranium sales, at this time, to any country that has nuclear weapons (including the US and France). Unless they have a clear disarmament focus.

It is clear to me that the US, under Bush has been fairly 'pro-nuke'. Additionally I believe that US unilateralism has been seen as provocative by many other nations.

I can understand why India developed weapons, however the long term has to be considered. Nukes everywhere would not make the whole world safe.

I will protest the sale of uranium at this time. This includes sales to China.

THE SOLUTION TO GLOBAL NUCLEAR WEAPONS:

Step 1. India signs the NPT as a nuclear weapons state. (India is ready to do so). This step is non-negotiable for the Indians.

Step 2. Once India signs, all the countries having nukes (whether or not they are NPT signatories) agree to simultaneously and verifiably destroy their nukes. (The USA and China may be stumbling blocks).

Step 3. A global force of watchdog nations should be willing to sanction and, if need be, attack any country that produces nukes henceforth. (Easier said than done)

I appreciate your joke, ecotrin.

you are the joke, MichaelK.

while u waste your life away on pseudo-intellectual arguments, we autralians are in action, putting in place a system to sell uranium to india.

you are losing the war.

stop us if you can, heh, heh, heh....

Selling uranium is like being a gunshop owner in the Bronx, you sell an instrument of death to a customer who has convinced you legally that they have nothing but the best intention's for its use. They tell their friends which creats demand for it and inevitably it always ends up with someone innocent being killed in the crossfire.

Maybe the answer is to sell the guns to everyone, that way people might be too scared to use it for fear of retaliation, anyway I would rather see us selling it to both India and Pakistan than Israel and George Bush's America.

yindin,

sell to pakistan at your own risk - it is a terror exporting country. Trails of all major terrorists in the last decade lead back to pakistan which is well known for state sponsored terror.

no matter how much you dislike the USA or Israel, you know deep inside that they will never attack Australia or cause it harm. They may do some mild arm twisting or be selfish, but that's where it stops. whereas china and pakistan and the middle east can and will do major harm to us if we don't watch out.

I attended the Joint Standing Committee on Treaties hearing regarding China. Ongoing evidence of ineffective safeguards is more than reason enough not to export uranium at all...

Danger: nuke cover-up
3/9/07

THE agency dealing with Australia's uranium exports is making an absurd claim.

The Australian Safeguards and Non-Proliferation Office says Australia sells uranium only to countries with "impeccable" non-proliferation credentials.

In fact, Australia has uranium export agreements with nuclear weapon states that are failing to fulfil their disarmament obligations under the Non-Proliferation Treaty.

Australia is also dealing with states with a history of covert nuclear weapons research based on their "civil" nuclear programs.

Last year's debate on uranium sales to China showed the Safeguards Office at its worst.

ASNO did not know the number of nuclear facilities in China, nor which of these would process uranium and its by-products, was dismissive of China having the worst record of exports of proliferation- sensitive materials and know-how of any of the nuclear weapon states and claims that all nuclear materials derived from Australia's uranium exports are "fully accounted for".

But that claim is false. There are frequent accounting discrepancies involving Australia's nuclear exports.

What ASNO means when it says that nuclear material is "fully accounted for" is that it has accepted all the explanations provided by uranium customer countries for accounting discrepancies, however fanciful those explanations may be.

Perhaps the most misleading of the claims made by ASNO is its repeated assertion that nuclear power does not present a weapons proliferation risk.

In fact, power reactors have been used directly in weapons programs.

Some examples include India, which is reserving eight out of 22 power reactors for weapons production.

The inevitable conclusion arising from our detailed critique of the Safeguards Office is that, at best, it is ineffectual.

Prof RICHARD BROINOWSKI - former Australian ambassador and Assoc Prof TILMAN RUFF - Australian chair of the International Campaign to Abolish Nuclear Weapons.
Full: http://www.news.com.au/heraldsun/story/0,21985,22350333-5000117,00.html

http://www.VoteNuclearFree.net

Only idiots are happy with a motto and conditions of “non-proliferation” because using uranium purchased for civilian programmes not to prevent own resource from military deployment but just allows conservation of own strategic disposals.

Those trading Australian national resources (uranium especially) are more dangerous to this country than all saddams existing on the Earth because they harm already the future generations practically, while any terrorist-to-date could affect presumably.

MichaelK

Superficially, your argument makes sense. But if you dig deeper, China and India will make the same number of bombs if they don't get the Uranium. But then their civilian nuclear facilities will suffer. And they will burn more oil.

Only solution is:

Step 1. India signs the NPT as the sixth nuclear weapons state. (India is ready to do so). This step is non-negotiable from the Indian standpoint.

Step 2. Once India signs, all the countries having nukes (whether or not they are NPT signatories) agree to simultaneously and verifiably destroy their nukes.

Step 3. A global force of watchdog nations should be willing to sanction and, if need be, attack any country that produces nukes henceforth.

If we start now, this can be easily achieved within 30 years or less, making all nations equal as far as possession of nuclear weapons.

I am a pro-nuke hawk, but if India is offered the NPT as a nuclear state, I and a billion people in India will work worldwide to make nuke free world a reality.

So let us join hands !!

Seemingly, one's luck of elementary acknowledgement with calcium-higher math, not speaking more on general approaches and mentalities, contributes sometimes a little to ease communication, ecotrin.

Sharing concern of non-proliferation is not synonymous to really preventing the spreading of nuke technologies round the globe as history manifested.

Apparently, pushing India into the NPT is a very goal of the USA by de-facto cat and mouse game on nuke-relations topic occurring.

However, call for annihilating nuclear ammunitions is rather naïve than practical because it benefits illegal owners of such stuff and simply terrorists not destroying but possessing any sort of the WMD, intensifying pressure on a nuke-free world.

And beyond my comprehension, supplying a priceless resource worldwide supposes to upheld a colonial appendix status even on technical merits explicitly.