Australia may lift ban on uranium supply to India

Australia, home to the world's largest uranium reserves, could drop its ban on selling the yellowcake to India after a panel commissioned by Prime Minister Kevin Rudd and his Japanese counterpart Yukio Hotoyama recommended changes to the nuclear non-proliferation regime.

Adopting a fresh approach, the International Commission on Nuclear Non-Proliferation and Disarmament suggested that Australia could give India access to its uranium provided "equivalent disciplines" were applied to help meet disarmament obligations. Australia's uranium reserves are the world's largest, accounting for 23 percent of the total. The panel's report suggested that three nations not covered by Non Proliferation Treaty treaty -- India, Pakistan and Israel-- should sign up to "parallel instruments" designed to ensure they did not divert civilian nuclear materials to military use that will pave the way for them to access uranium and other nuclear materials and technology.

Australia has refused to sell uranium to India because New Delhi has not signed NPT, the main international pact to limit the spread of nuclear weapons. The Rudd government angered India soon after coming to power in 2007, when it abandoned a John Howard-era deal to supply yellowcake to India.

Suggestions in the report -- released by Rudd and Hotoyama on Tuesday in Tokyo - could resolve this impasse.

The panel said the reality is that India, Pakistan and Israel would not sign up to the NPT and this meant "every effort should be made to achieve their participation in parallel instruments and arrangements which apply equivalent non-proliferation and disarmament obligations".

"Provided they satisfy strong objective criteria demonstrating commitment to disarmament and non- proliferation... these states should have access to nuclear materials and technology for civilian purposes on the same basis as an NPT member," the report said.

"I think it's pretty self-evident that the ban on supplying uranium to India is a lost cause," commission co- chairman and former Australian foreign minister Gareth Evans was quoted as saying by The Age.

Rudd and his then Japanese counterpart Taro Aso set up the commission 18 months ago amid concerns that the treaty was ineffective in dealing with controversial nuclear programmes of North Korea and Iran.

The panel also called on the nuclear powers to cut their arsenals of warheads from 23,000 to 2000 by 2025, to take them off hair-trigger alert status and to adopt "no first use" doctrines.

Rory Medcalf, Lowy Institute's programme director for international security, said, "This report is very supportive of the nuclear energy renaissance."