PM to ask Howard for support to N-deal

As Australian Premier John Howard began his four-day visit to India, Prime Minister Manmohan Singh was quoted on Monday as saying that he will ask him to back the Indo-US nuclear deal. He will also ask for lifting of the ban on sale of Uranium to New Delhi.

"I very much hope Australia, as a member of the Nuclear Suppliers' Group, will endorse what US President George W Bush and I have worked out. This is an arrangement that helps the cause of nuclear non-proliferation. India has an impeccable record of not entering into any unauthorised arms proliferation," Dr Singh said in an interview to the The Australian.

The prime minister added - "I hope Australia will be an important partner in this. We are short of uranium. We need to import uranium and our needs will increase in years to come."

Dr Singh said he would like to buy uranium from Australia to feed his country's 'growing appetite' for the raw material.

Australian Foreign Minister Alexander Downer had, last week, ruled out changing their policy of not selling uranium to India as it has refused to sign the Nuclear Non-Proliferation Treaty. However, in an interview before leaving Sydney for New Delhi on Sunday, Howard was more accomodating as he said Australia would 'study' the deal and 'if there are things that should additionally be done that are in Australia's interests then we'll do them'.

Dr Singh also 'plans' to ask for Howard's support in getting the US-India deal accepted by the international Nuclear Suppliers' Group, the newspaper said. His comments will put Australia under pressure to choose between the new US-India partnership of democracies and Canberra's traditional adherence to the non-proliferation treaty, which has no method of including any part of India's growing nuclear programme in the international regime, it said.

The prime minister also called for increased defence co-operation between India and Australia. Dr Singh said he did not believe that Pakistan was doing enough to combat terrorism and to prevent its territory from being used by terrorists.

He said he hoped that Howard would convey this message to Pakistan President Pervez Musharraf, when he visits the country after India.

Protection of sea trade lanes and combating piracy are areas where Australia and India could co-operate more, but co-operation can extend far beyond that, the newspaper quoted Dr Singh as saying. He also said he hoped Howard's visit would take the 'very much underdeveloped' bilateral relationship with Australia to a new level.

"We both play cricket, we are members of the Commonwealth, we are English-speaking and now I find there's a growing number of Indian students (25,000) whose preferred destination for education is Australia," Dr Singh said.