NEW DELHI: Having successfully wrested a waiver from the Nuclear Suppliers Group, India is preparing to press Australia to supply uranium to its reactors, hoping to build on Canberra's support during negotiations in Vienna.

The Manmohan Singh government is looking to engage Australia in all earnestness as despite the initial ambivalence, Kevin Rudd's government backed the waiver. India is now hoping that Canberra will similarly revisit its position on uranium supply.

Sources said the issue would be taken up with Australian foreign minister Stephen Smith who arrives in India on Tuesday. The Rudd administration had, after being voted to office last year, overturned the decision of the previous Conservative government to sell uranium to India.

Rudd, a fluent Mandarin speaker, has taken the traditional Labour line on uranium supplies but India is expected to argue that the waiver should address Australian concerns over dealing with a state which has not signed NPT. Besides, earlier this year, the Labour government reaffirmed the Howard regime's commitment to supply about 20,000 tonnes of uranium a year to China, beginning 2010. This should cater to most of China's power needs.

As Australia accounts for 40% of the world's uranium, India is eyeing a commercial deal for its civilian reactors. It is felt that it would not be easy for the Australian government to turn down India, without being seen as biased in favour of China, all the more so in the wake of the NSG waiver which it has helped facilitate.

Despite the large geographical separation, there are strong shared interests that bind India and Australia in terms of security and trade in the Indian Ocean. Australia has, in recent years, revisited its security doctrine, keeping a close watch on extremism in Indonesia while its alliance with the US in the "war on terror" has placed it on the jihadi map.

A senior official said, "Australia's stand does not make sense now as the waiver which (Australia) helped us acquire doesn't deny us the right to buy uranium from other countries. In any case, now that we have the waiver, we are not desperate. It would be as big a loss for them because we can import from countries like Canada and South Africa."

Australia has backed India at both IAEA and NSG but has been adamant that India can't have its uranium by remaining outside NPT, even if this meant watching other countries step into the breach. While the waiver has led to speculation on this front in Australia, the Rudd government is yet to make a statement. In case Australia doesn't relent, India will look at Canada, which also backed India at the NSG by not remaining hostage to its strong anti-proliferation stand. Canada is second only to Australia in uranium supply. Both countries have high-grade ores with 12% to 15% uranium.

India has a reserve of about 80,000 tonnes of uranium but needs almost a lakh tonnes more to run its reactors.

The brazen manner in which the Rudd-led Labour government had summarily rejected Howard's preparedness to supply uranium evoked considerable anger in New Delhi. The Rudd government took the "puritanical" position that Australia cannot sell uranium to a country which has refused to sign NPT. The manner in which Australia went on to dump the quadrilateral process (US, Japan, India and Australia) initiated by Tokyo only added to the notion that Rudd could be influenced by China.