Antinuclear

South Asia security at risk with Canada’s (and Australia’s) uranium deals with India

Nuclear non-proliferation selectivism Nation.com Senator Sehar Kamran April 22, 2015 Canada recently signed a 280 million dollar deal for the supply of 3,000 metric tonnes of uranium over the next five years to India, a nuclear weapon state outside the NPT. This deal comes against the backdrop of experts’ warnings that the agreement will spur proliferation in the region, and if the Indian test of Agni III, mere hours after the signing of the deal, is any indication of things to come, the warnings are not without cause. The deal, if put in perspective of the recent efforts by the West to bring outlier states to abide by the rules of the Nuclear Nonproliferation Treaty (NPT), undermines the efforts for the universalisation of a rules-based nuclear non-proliferation regime.

It is staggering to think that the very same country that forsook all nuclear cooperation some 45 years earlier with India after the latter diverted nuclear fuel from Canadian reactors, supplied for ‘peaceful, civilian’ use, to conduct a nuclear weapons test would now actively sign a 5-year deal that can only further exacerbate the South Asian security dilemma. The deal brushes aside the entire controversy of the Indian episode of proliferation of nuclear fuel for conducting a nuclear test. At the very least, it is not a story any of the major powers are ready to lend an ear to anymore, busy as they are cashing in on the growing market economy of India. Paul Meyer, Canada’s former permanent representative to the Geneva Disarmament Conference expressed his fears in this regard saying that, “All of this flows from decisions where we essentially sold the shop some years back, sacrificing our nuclear non-proliferation principles and objectives for some other considerations, and I think it’s been a very poor deal for us in terms of the risks of nuclear proliferation.”………

April 25, 2015 - Posted by Christina Macpherson | Uncategorized