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Don’t sell uranium to Russia: Aussie MPs – Breaking News – National – Breaking News

Don’t sell uranium to Russia: Aussie MPs

The Age September 18, 2008 – 12:09PM

Australia should hold off ratifying a treaty to sell uranium to Russia, a Labor-led parliamentary committee has recommended.

Former prime minister John Howard and Russian Prime Minister Vladimir Putin signed the uranium deal worth $1 billion a year at the APEC meeting in Sydney a year ago.

Russia insists it will use the uranium for civilian nuclear power use and not to make nuclear weapons either in Russia or in another country.

But parliament’s joint standing committee on treaties, chaired by Labor’s Kelvin Thomson, on Thursday recommended the Rudd government not ratify the treaty until it was satisfied Russia was complying with its obligations under the Nuclear Non-Proliferation Treaty (NPT).

The government should also be satisfied Russia would not abandon the NPT and give more consideration to recent political events in Russia, such as its conflict with Georgia, the report said.

Russia’s attempts to separate its civilian and military nuclear facilities should be completed and independently verified before sales proceed, the report said.

Inspections of Russian facilities proposed to handle Australian nuclear material should be completed by the International Atomic Energy Agency, it said………………………..

The Australian Greens condemned the treaty and welcomed the committee’s majority report.

West Australian Greens senator Scott Ludlam warned Russia could send Australian uranium to Iran if the sales went ahead.

“The safeguards regime, itself, is inadequate,” he said.

Fellow Greens senator Christine Milne says Russia could not be trusted because it was going back to its “old KGB days”.

Don’t sell uranium to Russia: Aussie MPs – Breaking News – National – Breaking News

Tags: nuclear, antinuclear, uranium, radioactive

September 18, 2008 - Posted by Christina Macpherson | politics