An absurd decision by Rudd means that an opportunity for twenty percent of the world's population to move to power not producing Carbon Dioxide won't be realized.
It becomes more perverse when one observes that Rudd signed Kyoto for the very reason of reducing green house gasses.
Note, Kyoto doesn't limit greenhouse gasses, but nuclear power does.
So why the executive decision by Rudd? Politics. It turns out that Rudd isn't controlled by people caring about the environment.
Sunday, January 20, 2008
Power Goes To Rudd's Head
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Australia clarifies: it’s wait and watch on uranium sale
Shishir Gupta
NEW DELHI, JANUARY 17: A day after Australia said it would not supply uranium to India unless it signed the Non-Proliferation Treaty (NPT), its Foreign Minister, Stephen Smith, confessed to visiting Indian envoy Shyam Saran he had no idea that a mere reiteration of the Labour party’s long-standing nuclear policy would spark off a bilateral controversy.
Government sources indicated that New Delhi may informally take up the issue with visiting Australian Trade Minister Simon Cream tomorrow on the sidelines of a bilateral meeting with Commerce Minister Kamal Nath.
The Australian government spokesman has already side-stepped Smith’s statement, saying his government would “wait and watch” the outcome of New Delhi’s dialogue with the 45-member Nuclear Suppliers Group (NSG) before taking a decision on nuclear commerce with India.
Saran had gone to Australia at the invitation of Smith after the Labour government headed by Kevin Rudd took charge. As Smith’s constituency is near Perth, Saran was invited to brief the Foreign Minister on the status of the Indo-US nuclear deal and the larger bilateral relationship apart from watching the India-Australia Test at WACA.
PMO sources confirmed to The Indian Express that during his official meeting with Smith, Saran briefed him in detail about the nuclear deal, including India’s ongoing talks with the IAEA and its engagement with the NSG to seek waiver on nuclear commerce. Saran did not take up with Smith the issue of Australia supplying uranium to India, sources said, since New Delhi still does not have a green signal from the NSG.
Smith, on his part, told Saran that Australia could not supply uranium to India as per the Labour government’s policy unless it signed the NPT. To which Saran only said that Australia should take decisions on nuclear commerce on the basis of India’s impeccable nuclear non-proliferation record. Sources said Saran was not surprised by the
Australian stand since this was a long-standing policy of the Labour party that replaced John Howard’s government in Canberra.
That’s politics
With the nuclear deal, Australia would not be compelled to deny uranium to India
The Indian Express
: Although the Department of Atomic Energy badly needs imported fuel for its starved nuclear power programme, New Delhi can’t do much about Australia’s decision not to sell uranium to India. For the moment, the UPA government’s headache is not about finding uranium suppliers. Its problem is that India is not eligible, under current international non-proliferation law, to import anything nuclear. The Indo-US nuclear deal is about changing that regime to let India regain access to international nuclear markets. Unable to convince its communist partners to look beyond their ideological prejudices, the UPA government can hardly afford to get angry about Australia’s insensitive announcement.
If the UPA government can get its political act together and implement the nuclear deal, there are uranium suppliers other than Australia that India can turn to. Meanwhile, the Indian establishment needs to recognise that other governments too have domestic politics to contend with. The Australian Labour, which recently swept to power after more than a decade in wilderness, has a strong faction that, much like our own communists and peaceniks, has strong nuclear views. Australia’s Labour left insists that uranium can’t be sold to countries that do not sign the Nuclear Non-Proliferation Treaty. Just as our communists can’t be made to see reason, there is no way of explaining to Labour’s disarmament activists that the NPT does not in any way prohibit Australia from selling uranium to India. Like ‘anti-imperialism’ to our communists, ‘NPT’ is a mantra for the Australian left.
To be fair, the new Australian foreign minister, Stephen Smith, was merely stating the current position of the Labour Party and the reality that India is not expected to sign the NPT. That Smith did not rule out a future policy review leaves some hope that Australia will eventually get it calculations right on the costs of nuclear hostility towards India. Labour’s decision to reverse the previous government’s interest in nuclear cooperation with India underlines the importance of timing in diplomacy. The longer India takes to get its own act together, there will be unpredictable developments abroad that could fatally damage India’s nuclear prospects. In politics, as in life, nothing is inevitable.
editor@expressindia.com
Won’t sell uranium until you sign NPT, Australia tells India
Reuters
CANBERRA, JANUARY 15: Australia’s new Labor government told India’s nuclear envoy Shyam Saran today it would not sell uranium to New Delhi unless it signs the Non-Proliferation Treaty (NPT), reversing a decision by the previous government.
Foreign Minister Stephen Smith told Saran, architect of a deal with the United States to provide nuclear power aid to India while allowing it to continue nuclear weapons production, that Canberra would not agree to exports of uranium to India.
“We went into the election with a strong policy commitment we would not export uranium to nation states who are not members of the nuclear Non-Proliferation Treaty,” Smith said after the meeting. Labor won office in November 2007.
(ENS adds: A release issued by the Indian High Commission in Canberra said: “The Special Envoy, while noting the Labor government’s position in this regard, emphasised India’s impeccable record in non-proliferation, a record that has been universally acknowledged and appreciated.”
While seeking Australian support in the NSG group, India expressed the hope that when the nuclear energy market in the country opens up, “Australia would also become a valued partner.”)
Saran was made special envoy for the Prime Minister to build support for the Indo-US pact among the Nuclear Suppliers Group.
ALP’s stupid nuclear snub
Piers Akerman
THE Rudd Labor government faced the first test of its diplomatic skills last week and flunked.
No, that’s not a reference to its failure to stop acts of piracy in the Southern Ocean, it’s a clear reference to its inability to confront the more demanding issue of uranium sales to the largest English-speaking democracy in the world, and one of the biggest nations, India.
Foreign Minister Stephen Smith snubbed India’s nuclear envoy Shyam Saran when he was in Perth for talks, telling the Indian that “party politics’’ prevented the Rudd government from fulfilling a deal negotiated by the former Coalition government to supply India with nuclear fuel for power generation.
These are the same “party politics’’ which propelled Prime Minister Kevin Rudd into making such a big thing about signing up to the next-to-useless Kyoto Protocols as one of his government’s first acts (though he did flee the Bali conference when the bureaucrats got bogged in discussion about future limits on emissions. He was also forced to gag Environment Minister Peter Garrett in an act of mercy designed to prevent the former pop star from making an even bigger goose of himself).
If Prime Minister Rudd and the ALP really cared for the environmental future of the world and were not just concerned with trawling for votes from the environmental fringes, the Australian government would ensure that nations with a desperate need for clean energy were given priority access to Australian uranium.
India, with an impeccable nuclear non-proliferation record, and a population of 1.2 billion in need of energy to drive its huge economy, needs vast increases in its energy resources, and it makes obvious sense that its future energy supplies are as clean as possible.
Instead, the blinkered ALP has fallen back on its antiquated, ideologically driven policies to deny Australia an opportunity to do something of real consequence in reducing carbon emissions and in assisting an entirely deserving neighbour.
It doesn’t take a pair of umpires and a video to determine that this is not cricket.
India, not a signatory to the Nuclear Non-Proliferation Treaty, is in the throes of negotiating an agreement with the International Atomic Energy Agency on “India-specific safeguards’’ to govern its use of nuclear fuel.
This is not good enough for the Rudd Labor government, however, which has its eyes fixed on the inner-urban ALP branches which dictate so much of its environmental and social agenda.
Trade Minister Simon Crean, who was in New Delhi to open Australia’s new chancery at the High Commission, defended his government’s stance but seemed to leave open the possibility that Australia might, oddly, agree to a new position being developed within the 45-member Nuclear Suppliers Group of nations which would see India being given a waiver from the Non-Proliferation Treaty.
India, in talks with the former Coalition government, gave undertakings that would have permitted Australian nuclear inspectors to ensure that any Australian uranium sold to India was used only for peaceful purposes.
Labor is telling the world that it believes in a global response to human-induced climate change but it is not prepared to take the logical practical steps necessary to help India do its bit to reduce reliance on dirty technologies.
In a stinging editorial, The Indian Express said the Australian Left, “much like our own communists and peaceniks’’, regarded the Nuclear Non-Proliferation Treaty as a “mantra’’.
In a region that is reeling with instability, India is a rock, largely due to the legacy of British imperialism, a common language and a common law, both shared to a great degree by Australia.
While much of the Third World is a terrorist training camp, India is a bulwark against bin Laden and his adherents, and its economic success contributes strength to that struggle.
The ALP’s uranium policy is a towering example of the monumental stupidity and short-sightedness that bedevils politicians when they turn their backs on the world to curry favour (no pun intended) in their own little bailiwicks.
The old Trotskyites and Marxists who found their way into the environmental movement when the last vestiges of the Soviet empire crumbled to dust are still actively directing aspects of the ALP’s policy and smart members of the Rudd Cabinet know it.
For all the Ruddites’ talk of clean, green energy, they know that only nuclear-fuelled generators can deliver the base-load power necessary to keep the global economy in operation while trying to cut greenhouse gas emissions.
Future generations, here as well as in India and other nations, will wonder why the Australian Government refused to allow exports to nations which desperately wanted to help their people economically and do so in an environmentally friendly way.
Condemning India to seek nuclear fuel elsewhere in its bid to clean-up the planet while we hold huge uranium stocks is a real no-brainer fit for a Bollywood comedy.
Sadly, however, this is not a film script. This hypocrisy is the reality of Labor’s policy.
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