SYDNEY: Australian Prime Minister Tony Abbott said on Wednesday he hoped to sign a deal this week to sell uranium to India for power generation, but halted uranium exports to Russia over Moscow’s role in Ukraine.

Work on an India-Australia agreement has been underway since Australia, which has 40 per cent of the world’s known uranium reserves, lifted a longstanding ban on selling uranium to energy-starved India in 2012.

Nuclear-armed India and Australia have been working on a safeguards agreement since then to ensure any uranium exports from Australia are used purely for peaceful purposes.

“I am hoping to sign a nuclear cooperation agreement that will enable uranium sales by Australia to India,” Mr Abbott, who will visit India this week, told parliament in Canberra.

Uranium exports to Russia halted

India faces chronic shortages of electricity, and a quarter of its billion-plus population has little or no access to power.

Two-thirds of India’s power supplies come from burning coal, and it is keen to shift the balance towards nuclear technology over the next few years.

Canberra had previously refused to sell nuclear material to India because it had not signed the Nuclear Non-Proliferation Treaty (NPT).

Asked what steps had been taken to ensure there were appropriate safeguards, Trade Minister Andrew Robb said the government had “satisfied ourselves that the steps are in place”.

“The negotiations and work that’s gone on between authorities in India and Australia have gone on for some years to develop a bilateral nuclear cooperation agreement which meets the international requirements and we are satisfied, our officials are satisfied, that all the requirements have been met,” Mr Robb told ABC radio.

Meanwhile, Australia imposed a ban on uranium sales to Russia, two days after Canberra unveiled fresh sanctions against Russia over what Mr Abbott called its “bullying” of neighbouring Ukraine.

“There will be no uranium sales to Russia until further notice and Australia has no intention of selling uranium to a country which is so obviously in breach of international law as Russia currently is,” Mr Abbot told parliament.

Australia and Russia signed a bilateral agreement in 2007 enabling uranium exports. Only a small trial shipment of less than a hundred tonnes uranium has been shipped to Russia.

Australia’s decision to overturn its longstanding ban on uranium sales to India followed a landmark US agreement to support the civil nuclear programme in India, seen by Washington as an economic and geopolitical counterweight to China.

Washington signed the deal with New Delhi in 2008 allowing India to import US nuclear fuel and technology without giving up its military nuclear programme. India is seeking a similar agreement with Japan.

Critics accused the United States of undermining the global non-proliferation regime.

India has refused to sign the nuclear NPT, arguing it is discriminatory and flawed in allowing only countries which had tested nuclear weapons before 1967 to legally possess them.

Pakistan, Israel and North Korea are the only other non-signatories to the treaty which aims to prevent the spread of nuclear weapons as well as foster peaceful uses of nuclear energy.

India’s status as a nuclear power features highly among new Prime Minister Narendra Modi’s priorities.

Published in Dawn, September 4th, 2014