Antinuclear

Lowy Institute debased public debate on uranium sales to India

The Lowy Institute takes money from Rio Tinto and BHP Billiton, the two companies that stand to profit most from the Labor government’s policy change. I’ve never once seen that funding disclosed in relevant Lowy Institute publications. …

The think tank that didn’t, Online opinion,   By Jim Green – , 16 February 2012 “………The opening up of nuclear trade with India − which began with the 2008 US-India agreement − is problematic on several levels. For starters, Medcalf wants us to believe that we can play a more effective role in promoting non-proliferation and disarmament in India by first permitting uranium sales. The US, Australia and some other suppliers have conspicuously failed to use their bargaining chip (the opening up of nuclear trade) to leverage outcomes such as Indian ratification of the Comprehensive Test Ban Treaty. According to Medcalf’s ‘logic’, we’ll be in a better bargaining position after we’ve given up our bargaining chip (for nothing) than before.”..

…[The Lowy Institute] did seriously debase the [nuclear] debate…….Let’s get to the main problem: Medcalf dimisses weapons proliferation-based objections to nuclear trade with India as “false” and “fallacious”. Nothing could be further from the truth.

Nuclear trade with India also alters the proliferation equation for other countries. Ron Walker, a former Australian diplomat and former Chair of the Board of Governors of the International Atomic Energy Agency (IAEA), said: “Yes, India is a democracy and yes we want to be in their good books, but that is no reason to drop our principles and our interests. To make an exception for them would be crass cronyism. If you make exceptions to your rules for your mates, you weaken your ability to apply them to everyone else. How could we be harder on Japan and South Korea if they acquired nuclear weapons? Could we say Israel is less of a mate than India?”……

Problems are already evident in the wake of the 2008 US-India agreement, not least China’s use of the precedent to justify its plan to sell more reactors to Pakistan.

Medcalf says that safeguards applying to uranium sales to India would be at least as strong as those applying to uranium sales to China and Russia. But IAEA safeguards inspections in China are tokenistic and inspections in Russia are very nearly non-existent − one inspection of one plant in 2001, and another in 2010. Medcalf surely knows that…..

And he surely knows about the controversy surrounding uranium sales to Russia. The Australian Safeguards and Non-proliferation Office (ASNO) misled parliament’s treaties committee in 2008 by claiming that “strict” safeguards would “ensure” peaceful use of Australian uranium and by conspicuously failing to tell the committee that there had not been a single IAEA safeguards inspection in Russia since 2001. The treaties committee made the modest recommendation that some sort of a safeguards system ought to be in place before uranium exports to Russia were approved, only to have its recommendation rejected. Interestingly, the head of ASNO at the time was John Carlson, who has since left ASNO and is now a ‘Visiting Fellow’ at the Lowy Institute.

The Lowy Institute takes money from Rio Tinto and BHP Billiton, the two companies that stand to profit most from the Labor government’s policy change. I’ve never once seen that funding disclosed in relevant Lowy Institute publications. ….

And there seems to be a disproportionate number of former government officials (Medcalf and Carlson among them) working for the Lowy Institute.

Whatever the explanation, it remains the case that Medcalf has seriously debased public debate on an important policy issue. The Lowy Institute should be held in contempt for so long as it continues to provide a platform for him to peddle his propaganda.  http://www.onlineopinion.com.au/view.asp?article=13257&page=2

February 16, 2012 - Posted by Christina Macpherson | AUSTRALIA - NATIONAL, spinbuster