Australia's decision to lift uranium sale ban on 'rising giant' India right thing to do: Expert

Canberra, Nov 16 (ANI): Australian Prime Minister Julia Gillard's decision of overturning a ban imposed on uranium sales to India is a right thing to do and is a mature act that banishes hypocrisy, according to an expert.

According to Christopher Kremmer, co-convener of the Australia India Institute's Perceptions Taskforce, Australia's relationship with the world's largest democracy has for years been held to ransom by the ludicrous proposition that selling uranium to China is a right thing to do, but selling it to India would be dangerous and wrong.

Kremmer believes the question is not about whether Australia sells uranium or not, it is about whom the nation sell it to, the Sydney Morning Herald reports.

He pointed out that China proliferates despite having signed the non-proliferation treaty, whereas India abides by the treaty but is not a signatory.

Australia rewards a duplicitous one-party state and punishes a democracy that plays by the rules.

He further said that India does not sign the treaty, as doing so would require it to abandon its nuclear weapons.

And a nation, with more than a billion people to defend, and unresolved border disputes with China and Pakistan, both nuclear-armed, would definitely be rejected by its people if it chooses to abandon its weapons.

According to Kremmer, opponents of Gillard's plan, some of the Left MPs, will point out that India can buy its uranium elsewhere.

Kremmer says it is absolutely true, but points out it is also true that for as long as Australia refuses to face the economic and moral realities of this issue, our political relationship with India, the world's largest democracy, one of its largest economies and an important security player in our region, will remain stalled.

He further said that as Pakistan, North Korea, Libya, Iran and Israel kept busily working on their undeclared nuclear weapons programs, India's decision to declare itself a nuclear weapons state in 1998 was the logical outcome of unsustainable moral posturing by hypocritical Western powers. (ANI)