Posted on 07/26/2007 3:13:19 AM PDT by Dundee
FEDERAL cabinet's National Security Committee is likely in the next few weeks to consider a submission from the Department of Foreign Affairs and Trade to change Australian policy so that we can sell uranium to India. This is very good policy indeed, and cabinet should endorse the submission...
Why should Australia go ahead and sell uranium to India?
The deal is good for nuclear non-proliferation. India has never proliferated nuclear technology to anybody, unlike China, to whom we are happy to sell uranium. It is certainly never going to give up its nuclear weapons. This deal puts India's enormous and growing peaceful nuclear power industry under IAEA supervision.
The strategic imperative is overwhelming. This is a fundamental coming together of India and the US, with profound implications for Australia. Nothing could be more important in cementing India as a friend of US and Australian interests. If the deal were repudiated, it would be disastrous. The love-China-exclusively brigade in Australia is distressed that we may be so promiscuous as to embrace a giant, growing Asian democracy as well as the giant, growing Asian dictatorship, but in terms of our values and our interests, we would be foolish not to.
The global warming considerations are substantial. China is the largest greenhouse gas emitter in the world. Its emissions grew by about 7per cent last year, while those of the US declined by more than 1 per cent. India is growing at Chinese rates. If global warming is real, it cannot possibly be tackled without involving China and India. Nuclear energy, which does not emit greenhouse gases, must be one part of that equation... If global warming is a genuine problem, that is an irrational position.
The Australia-India relationship will benefit enormously...
The economic returns to Australia could be very significant...
(Excerpt) Read more at theaustralian.news.com.au ...
Australia seems to be battling within itself to shake off the Chinese economic and political stranglehold. Perhaps it can do with a little bit of Indian help.
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