MELBOURNE: Australian government will
not sell uranium to India despite welcoming Nuclear Suppliers Group (NSG)
decision to end the 34-year long embargo on nuclear trade with India, official
said.
"However, Labor is committed to supplying uranium to only
those countries party to the NPT. Australia will therefore not be supplying
uranium to India while it is not a member of the NPT," Australian trade Minister
Simon Crean was quoted as saying in
The
Australian
newspaper report on Monday.
Labor party welcomed
the decision by NSG as strengthening the global security of nuclear facilities,
Crean said.
However, the federal Opposition claims Labor's policy
was hypocritical and said Foreign Minister should use his next visit to India to
announce a new uranium policy.
"Foreign Minister Stephen Smith
should use next week's visit to India to announce a new uranium export policy
for New Delhi," Opposition Foreign Affairs spokesman Andrew Robb said on Sunday.
While critics of the Vienna announcement said the decision would
undermine the non-proliferation efforts, Robb said Canberra needed to support
India in efforts to produce greenhouse gas-free electricity.
"One of
the first foreign policy acts of the Rudd government was to renege on a decision
by the Howard government to help India supply greenhouse gas-free electricity to
its growing population by providing uranium under an agreement being negotiated
between the US and India," he said.
"Since that time, the Rudd
Government has been humiliated into supporting the US-India agreement at
meetings of the International Atomic Energy Agency and the NSG which effectively
condoned the sale of uranium to India by other countries around the world," he
added.