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Tony Abbott has defended an agreement to sell uranium to India, describing it as a “model citizen” with peaceful ambitions.
The prime minister is expected to sign a long-awaited nuclear safeguards agreement with his counterpart, Narendra Modi, in Delhi on Friday.
The deal would allow Australia to start shipping its abundant reserves of uranium to the subcontinent, which is struggling to meet its vast energy needs.
It’s a controversial move because India has refused to sign the Nuclear Non-Proliferation Treaty, which ensures uranium is used for civilian energy purposes and not weapons.
But Abbott said it signalled trust with the “world’s emerging democratic superpower”.
“India has an absolutely impeccable non-proliferation record,” he told reporters in Mumbai on Thursday. “India has been a model international citizen. India threatens no one.”
But when asked how Australia could guarantee India used its uranium as promised, Abbott declared: “It’s not our job to try to tell India how to conduct its internal affairs.”
The Australian Greens condemned the deal, warning uranium wasn’t any ordinary commodity.
“It is a strategic mineral and a trade that Australia should be getting out of,” Greens senator Scott Ludlam said in a statement.
Australia’s refusal to sell uranium to India has been a sore point between the nations for years.
Former prime minister John Howard first gave in-principle support to the idea, but Kevin Rudd promptly rescinded the agreement once elected to the office.
It was Julia Gillard during her tenure who convinced Labor in 2011 to overturn its ban on uranium sales to India, and negotiations for a safeguards deal began the following year.
India already buys almost $5 billion worth of Australian coal every year, but is keen to supply more of its energy needs from its 21 nuclear reactors.
On Friday, Abbott told a gathering of business chiefs in New Delhi that he wanted to finalise negotiations for a free trade deal with India by the end of 2016.
“There has never been a better time to revitalise a friendship that has usually been warm but has often been underdeveloped,” he told the forum. “We both need to be more ambitious.”
The Abbott government wants to capitalise on trade opportunities with the new administration of Modi, who made energy security a key plank of his reform platform.
Two-way trade with India is worth $15bn – about a 10th of that conducted with China, Australia’s top trading partner.
Abbott has confessed that Australia hasn’t invested enough time and energy in the subcontinent compared with the markets of north Asia.
“Our attention was elsewhere,” he told reporters in Mumbai. “Just think what could be achieved between Australia and India if there had been the same focus here as there has been there.”
He brought a top business delegation to India’s financial capital Mumbai to explore new trade and investment opportunities with Australia’s fifth biggest export market.
The government’s top trade priority remains, however, a free trade deal with China, which it’s confident will be inked by the end of the year.
Abbott will begin the official bilateral phase of his visit in Delhi on Friday.
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