Australia and China sign deal on uranium trade

CANBERRA: Australia and China signed a nuclear safeguards deal that set the stage for huge uranium exports to Beijing for its power industry, but Canberra said the trade was unlikely to start for some years.

Australian Foreign Minister Alexander Downer and his Chinese counterpart, Li Zhaoxing, signed the nuclear safeguards deal in the presence of visiting Chinese Premier Wen Jiabao and Australian Prime Minister John Howard.

"Given China's high projected growth in electricity demand over the coming years, there are clear environmental benefits in diversifying from fossil fuels to low greenhouse-emission technologies such as nuclear power," Downer said in a statement.

China is expected to build 40 to 50 nuclear power plants over the next 20 years and needs steady supplies of uranium. Its own uranium stocks are dwindling, not very rich and difficult to extract.

Australia has about 40 per cent of the world's known uranium reserves, but it will only export to countries that have signed

the UN Nuclear Non-Proliferation Treaty (NPT) and who also agree to a separate bilateral safeguards deal.

India also wants to buy uranium from Australia, but has not signed the NPT and Howard has said he was not planning to change his strict uranium trade policy just because New Delhi signed a nuclear technology deal with the United States.

The US-India deal agreed last month requires New Delhi to separate its military and civil nuclear facilities and open civilian plants to inspections in return for US nuclear fuel and technology, but still needs approval from the US Congress.

Australia only has three operating uranium mines, owned by BHP Billiton, Rio Tinto and General Atomics of the United States, and Resources Minister Ian Macfarlane has said big uranium exports to China were unlikely to start until 2010.

Macfarlane said China's predicted uranium consumption was estimated at 20,000 tonnes a year, while Australia currently produced only about 10,000 tonnes a year from its existing three mines. He said extra capacity would be needed to supply China.

Australia has 19 bilateral nuclear safeguard agreements covering 36 countries, including the United States, France, Britain, Mexico, Japan, Finland and South Korea.

The NPT requires the five nuclear-weapon states – Russia, the United States, United Kingdom, France, and China – not to transfer nuclear weapons, other nuclear explosive devices, or technology to non-nuclear-weapon states and non-NPT countries.

"I'm firm in the belief that with the considered effort of both countries, China/Australia relations and cooperations will yield rich fruits," Wen told a lunch at Parliament House.

About 25 human rights protesters gathered out the front of Parliament House in Canberra in opposition to Wen's visit, including a former Chinese diplomat who granted residency in Australia after he first sought political asylum.

Minority Australian Greens party politician Christine Milne said Australia was putting money before human rights and global security by allowing communist China to import uranium.

"Make no mistake – selling Australian uranium to China will make the world less safe," Milne said in a statement.

Australia and China are also negotiating a free trade deal and Wen said the two countries had agreed to accelerate talks.

"That is in the next one or two years China and Australia should work together to strive for breakthroughs on major issues related to the FTA negotiation. . . to lay the foundation for the arrival of an overall agreement," Wen said.

Howard praised Wen and said that the nuclear and other deals signed on Monday highlighted the countries developing ties.

"You represent a leader of a remarkable nation which is destined to play an even greater role in the affairs of the world and a nation with which Australia seeks to build an ever closer, more effective and more permanent partnership," Howard said.

Some analysts say the safeguards deal with China will test Australia's skills at juggling growing ties with Asia's emerging power and its strong alliance with the United States, which is wary of Beijing's military and economic ambitions.

Thus the Australian government and the self-annointed, self-appointed and self-perpetuating fascistic permanent public service with which it is, Samuel Taylor Coleridge-style, albatrossed, effectively, that is "Australia," our most consistent and best ally in the world, which, since its establishment as an independent nation, has stood shoulder by shoulder with US in every military expedition in which and regardless of by whom our nation has been engaged, sheets home the simple fact that nations do not have "friends."

Only interests.

And reinforces Comrade Stalin's oft' quoted and/or misquoted truism that when the barbarians who call themselves "communists" come to hang us, it will be with rope sold them for the purpose by those said communists called "capitalists." [Correct term "corporatists"]

Maybe it's payback time for the affect of decades of America's obscene agriculture subsidies upon generations of Australia's farmers?

well, maybe this evens it out :)

http://www.smh.com.au/news/national/now-taiwan-is-buying-our-uranium/2006/04/03/1143916466699.html

Now Taiwan is buying our uranium

TWO Australian mining companies have quietly signed contracts for the supply of uranium to China's arch-rival, Taiwan, raising fears that it could undermine efforts to stop the spread of nuclear weapons.

Taiwan is not a signatory to the non-proliferation treaty on nuclear arms, but it has confirmed the uranium deals to the Herald yesterday - on the same day that China's Premier signed a uranium deal with Australia in Canberra.

Although Taiwan does not have nuclear weapons, the CIA revealed in the '70s that it had established a program to acquire them.

In the past Australia rebuffed pressure from Taiwan to sell it uranium, fearing a hostile reaction from China.

Taiwanese officials said the deal had been signed by the electricity producer Taipower with BHP Billiton and ERA during the past 12 months.

Osman Chia, from the Taipei economic and cultural office in Canberra - Taiwan's de facto embassy - said yesterday the arrangement provided for indirect trade through the US.

"We don't have official relations with Australia, so we go through the United States," Mr Chia said.

An ERA spokeswoman said last night that as yet no uranium had been shipped to Taiwan because all available production had already been pre-sold to other customers.

Late last year Taiwan warned that China's build-up of missiles - including with nuclear warheads - posed a threat to Australia and all other nations in the region.

There has been debate about the strategic wisdom of selling the ore to China as well as over John Howard recent floating of the idea of uranium sales to India.

India already has nuclear weapons and, like Taiwan, is not a signatory to the Nuclear Non-proliferation Treaty.

The Taiwanese uranium deals with Australia have escaped public attention even though they constitute a potential precedent for any supply of Australian uranium to India.

"We do not make the signing of individual contracts public," an ERA spokeswoman told the Herald yesterday.

The Hawke Labor government announced in 1986 that it would not allow any export of Australian uranium to Taiwan, noting a lack of diplomatic relations or bilateral safeguards agreement.

In 1996 the Foreign Minister, Alexander Downer, said Australia was "exploring conditions" for a reversal of the ban. But negotiations stalled amid diplomatic sensitivity over cross-straits relations and Canberra's alliance with the US.

Australia is also a party to the South Pacific Nuclear Free Zone Treaty, which bans uranium sales to any countries which have not signed the Nuclear Non-proliferation Treaty.

BHP Billiton refused to say when the first shipments to Taiwan would take place, but confirmed there was no public announcement in Australia when it signed the supply contract.

"It is not company policy to comment on the implementation of contracts," the BHP Billiton spokesman said.

The federal Resources Minister, Ian Macfarlane, told the Herald that Taiwan was a member of the International Atomic Energy Agency and subjected itself to inspections by the organisation. "However, Australia does not, and has no avenues, to sell uranium directly to Taiwan," he said.

"There is a strong global uranium market - Canada has already signed multi-billion contracts with China for the supply of nuclear reactors, at the same time as having an arrangement to sell uranium to Taiwan.

"As the largest holders of uranium, we can deal ourselves into the process of closely monitoring how the product is used around the world or we can just look on as others set rules we may not think are tough enough."

In 2002 little attention was paid to an "exchange of notes" between Australia and the US allowing "re-transfer" of Australian uranium.

The US recently agreed to provide nuclear technologies to India despite it not having signed the Nuclear Non-proliferation Treaty.

<< well, maybe this evens it out :) >>

Maybe -- and good on them. I pray and trust they'll ship tons of their yellowcake to the Israelis -- and to us, too.

The Aussies, both of whose only two viable political parties are, like our own, comprised of economics illiterates, are in a bit of a rock and a hard place kind of situation insofar as trade is concerned and likely feel they have to sell what they can sell where they can sell it. Not least, it must be noted, because of decades of our own feral gummint's obscenely socialistic subsidization of America's primary producers [And incitement and subsidization, via that vehicle, of the criminal-alien invasion] has created the mountains of un-needed and unsaleable produce that USAID and ADM and our various other corporate and communistic corruptocracies dump around the world, destroying markets and bankrupting our "friend's" [Australia's prominent among them] miners, farmers and every other kind of primary producers!

ping

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