Nov/15/2011

Australia mulls uranium exports to India

The Australian government looks set to overturn its ban on selling uranium to India after Prime Minister Julia Gillard changed sides on Tuesday and came out in support of lifting an embargo that has strained relations with the world’s biggest democracy.

Since taking office in 2007, the Labour government has tied uranium exports to India signing the 1970 Nuclear Non-Proliferation Treaty. India refuses to do so because that would entail getting rid of its nuclear arsenal.

Ms. Gillard is now pushing for Labour to endorse the policy of former Prime Minister John Howard and allow exports without the need for India to sign the treaty.

“We must, of course, expect of India the same standards we do of all countries for uranium export - strict adherence to International Atomic Energy Agency arrangements and strong bilateral and transparency measures which will provide assurances our uranium will be used only for peaceful purposes,” Ms. Gillard wrote in a column for The Sydney Morning Herald.

The uranium export ban is an impediment to closer ties and also holds up India’s programme to shift to nuclear power and away from its reliance on burning coal to generate electricity.

Australia has 40 per cent of the world’s easily recoverable uranium, the feedstock for nuclear power plants, but currently meets only 20 per cent of world demand.

Ms. Gillard will campaign for a change at a Labour conference next month where delegates set policy that the parliamentary party must follow.

The Greens, whose votes keep Ms. Gillard in power after a dead-heat election in August 2010, are opposed to lifting the ban.

“This is a country that has intermediate-range missiles,” Greens leader Bob Brown told national broadcaster ABC. “It’s developing a plethora of nuclear submarines with nuclear weapons.” Left-wing members of Ms. Gillard’s cabinet are also against the move but the prime minister’s change of heart could be compelling in reversing party policy.

Lavina Lee, a researcher at Sydney’s Macquarie University, describes the no—sales policy as nonsensical from any standpoint.

“It serves no real purpose in non-proliferation, is counter-productive in combating climate change and it stands in the way of Australia’s strategic relationship with India and should be reversed,” she told the Sydney Institute private think tank in a briefing last year.

Indian Prime Minister Manmohan Singh was a notable absentee at the Commonwealth heads of government meeting that Australia hosted in Perth earlier this month.

His absence - no Indian Prime Minister has visited Australia in 25 years - was linked by some analysts to annoyance at the uranium sales ban.

Ms. Lee pointed out that India has a better non-proliferation record than China, a buyer of Australian uranium, and should not be classed alongside nuclear-leaky North Korea and Pakistan.

“The sale of uranium shouldn’t be viewed as a reward for signing the (treaty) but as reward for being responsible,” she said.

North Korea withdrew from the treaty, and India, Pakistan and Israel have never signed.

When Mr. Howard was prime minister he supported India getting a waiver from the Nuclear Suppliers Group that endorsed it as a nuclear-capable state. The waiver enables India to purchase uranium from suppliers other than Australia.

Canada, which also had a longstanding proscription on uranium sales to India, reversed that decision in 2009.

Australia, which has no nuclear power plants, exports around 10,000 tons of uranium a year, around a quarter of which goes to Japan.

Uranium miners, who together shipped product worth 1 billion Australian dollars (1.3 billion U.S. dollars) last year, say annual receipts could grow to 17 billion Australian dollars by 2030 if world demand holds up.

Colourful start to ‘Golden Elephant' Children at the inaugural ceremony of the 17th International Film Festival in Hyderabad on Monday. 

The 17th edition of the International Children's Film Festival, ‘The Golden Elephant,' got off to a colourful start here on Monday evening with Chief Minister N. Kiran Kumar Reddy announcing that a permanent building would be ready for the next edition in 2013.

Thanks to Chairperson of the Children's Film Society Nandita Das and her team, who ensured that the inaugural event was not filled only with drab speeches of dignitaries, the international delegates and those from India participating in the seven-day extravaganza had a vibrant glimpse of the rich and diverse cultural and musical talent in the country as the performances drew repeated applause from the audience.

Besides the welcome dance interspersed with the background of score of ‘Sare Jahan Se Achha' and Vande Maataram,' the dance recital by a group of Bharat Natyam dancers holding candles in both hands and striking different postures while balancing on a foot on a pot by each of them received wide appreciation. However, the percussion played by master Steven Samuel for a while and later along with Sivamani took the cake with even Mr. Kiran Kumar Reddy smilingly lauding the performance and actor Akkineni Nagarjuna nodding his head.

The Chief Minister, who declared open the festival, said the children's movies besides providing clean entertainment should be message-oriented. They should be of high quality and influence the lives of children. He said the Andhra Pradesh government had earmarked 10 acres for constructing the permanent building for holding the International Children's Film Festival.

He said Andhra Pradesh was the only State which was not levying entertainment tax on children's films. The government was also providing a subsidy of Rs.30 lakh to producers who make children's films.

Union Minister of State for Information and Broadcasting Chowdhury Mohan Jatua said the international cinema shown during such festivals would enable the children to know the cultures of other people of the world.

Peep into world cinema

A. P. Information and Public Relations Minister D.K. Aruna said the festival had become the best platform for children's exposure to world cinema. Two films made by directors from her native Mahbubnagar district were being screened at the festival.

Ms. Nandita Das said that 152 films were being screened this time as against 70 in the last edition. The best of the films have been selected and for the first time films from Africa and South America were being shown. A special section on short films was also introduced and this time the ‘in-focus' section would be on films from China.

The festival would have four competition sections in which films from India and abroad would compete for awards. Films are being screened across 13 cinema halls and about 1.5 lakh children are expected to view them. Among others, well-known filmmaker D. Rama Naidu and actors Ram and Samantha were present. Actor Dia Mirza compered the inaugural event.

NSG all set to up-end India's clean waiver

Proposed restrictions on transfer of sensitive nuclear items are a 'derogation', 'rollback' of U.S. commitments, Indian officials had warned

Barring last minute objections, the Nuclear Suppliers Group (NSG) is set to approve new guidelines for the transfer of “sensitive” nuclear material that will do undo the hard fought “clean” waiver India obtained in 2008 from the cartel's restrictive export rules.

At stake is India's ability to buy enrichment and reprocessing technology and equipment (ENR) from NSG members. Under the terms of a landmark September 2008 agreement, the NSG waived its catch-all requirement of full-scope safeguards as a condition for supply in exchange for a concrete set of non-proliferation commitments by the Indian side. This agreement means NSG members are allowed to sell any nuclear equipment and material they want, including ENR, to India despite the fact that it does not allow international supervision over all its nuclear activities and is not a party to the Nuclear Non-Proliferation Treaty.

Two months after that waiver — a product of the July 2005 Indo-U.S. agreement in which Washington committed itself to “work with friends and allies to adjust international regimes to enable full civil nuclear energy cooperation and trade with India” — the Bush administration threw its weight behind a bad-faith effort to remove ENR equipment and technology from the purview of the NSG-India bargain.

It did so at least partly in order to keep a promise Condoleezza Rice made to the influential Congressman Howard Berman during the passage of the Hyde Act — that if Congress were to approve the proposal for nuclear commerce with India, the administration would get the NSG to ban the sale of ENR equipment to countries that had not signed the NPT.

Thus, under the proposed new guidelines as framed by the NSG in November 2008, ENR transfers will be allowed only if the recipient state fulfils a number of objective and subjective criteria. Top of the list is the requirement of NPT membership and full-scope safeguards. Since India is the only country outside of the NPT that NSG members are allowed to sell nuclear material to in the first place, it is obvious that these two criteria are aimed exclusively at India.

The revised NSG guidelines, known as the “clean text,” have not been adopted yet largely because a number of the 46-nation cartel's members have been objecting to some of the other proposed restrictions such as the requirement that recipient states adhere to an Additional Protocol. To push the process along, the U.S. got its G-8 partners to declare at L'Aquila in 2009 that they would abide by the “clean text” in the interim. The G-8 has sent the same message every year, most recently in Deauville. On a parallel track, U.S. diplomats have worked behind the scenes to bring each of the NSG dissenters on board. Language has been found to address the concerns of Canada, Argentina, Brazil, South Korea and the Netherlands. The only holdouts until a couple of months ago were Turkey and South Africa but even they are now believed to be ready to vote for the new ENR guidelines when the NSG holds its plenary in The Hague next week.

India has objected to this unilateral redrawing of the nuclear bargain with both the U.S. and the NSG, but mostly in private and mostly without any impact on the process.

On February 3, 2009, for example, Shivshankar Menon, who was Foreign Secretary at the time, wrote to Under Secretary William Burns in the U.S. State Department that the American initiative on an ENR ban at the NSG constituted a “derogation” of the bilateral India-U.S. agreement on civil nuclear cooperation, or “123 agreement.” “Menon's February 3 letter … made a legal claim that an ENR ban would be inconsistent with Article 5.2 of the 123 Agreement itself, which provides for the possibility of amendments to the Agreement to permit ENR transfers, claiming that a ban in the NSG would eliminate the possibility of making such changes,” Ambassador David C. Mulford told Washington in a cable accessed by The Hindu through WikiLeaks dated February 12, 2009 (191725: confidential).

The U.S. envoy went on to describe the exchange he had had on the ENR subject with the Foreign Secretary on February 11 as “an un-enriching discussion of reprocessing.” The cable says that Mr. Mulford “asked what more we could say to convince Menon that this issue did not warrant the aggressive posture adopted by India. Menon expressed surprise that his letter had generated concern. He replied, “All we need is a clear statement that your position has not changed. We would like to know that what we agreed in the 123 Agreement stands.” Ambassador Mulford noted that Indian officials felt the “criteria-based approach to ENR transfers” that requires NPT membership “is discriminatory toward India and not consistent with the spirit of the Agreement.” He cited, in particular, the views of Anil Kakodkar, who was head of the Department of Atomic Energy at the time, “who professed a sense of ‘betrayal' over the issue.”

Though he noted the Indian view that U.S. policy “is not consistent with their view of assurances provided during the 123 Agreement negotiations that, while the U.S. would not transfer ENR to India, we would not stand in the way of others doing so,” Ambassador Mulford said. Mr. Menon was “vague” and “not clear how reaffirming the 123 Agreement commitments would satisfy India's concerns.” He concluded that section of his cable by commenting: “Whatever the truth behind India's concerns, a good place to start would be with a clear affirmation that the Obama administration stands by the commitments made in the 123 Agreement.”

An anodyne and ultimately pointless affirmation was made a month later by Deputy Secretary of State Jim Steinberg, but the U.S. continued to press ahead with its effort to ban ENR sales to India. The July 2009 L'Aquila statement on non-proliferation at L'Aquila took a complacent Indian establishment completely by surprise. In public, the government tried to brazen it out, denying there had been any setback. “We have a clean waiver from the NSG. We have an India-specific safeguards agreement with the IAEA. We are not concerned over what position the G8 takes [on implementing the ‘clean text'],” Pranab Mukherjee told the Rajya Sabha on 13 July 2009. In private, of course, Indian officials were indeed concerned, very concerned.

During the November 2009 strategic security dialogue with the U.S., Foreign Secretary Nirupama Rao reminded Under Secretary for Arms Control Ellen Tauscher that India took a dim view of the proposed ban on ENR sales at the NSG. A U.S. Embassy cable sent soon after that dialogue reported: “Rao stressed that India supported the goal of preventing transfers of … ENR in principle, but asked that the United States' position in favor of a global ban not be seen as a “roll-back” of the NSG decision that made India a partner, and that India can't be seen as “half in and half out (of the NSG).” She characterised the pending decision as an “issue of significance for Indian perceptions about the Civil Nuclear Agreement and our partnership,” said a cable dated November 27, 2009 (236981: confidential).