Following our story of India plans to put the nuclear deal with US down the drains to save the coalition government which is between UPA and Left. Now Australia has decided to review its plans to sell uranium to India after the Indian Prime Minister, Manmohan Singh, has told the US President, George Bush, that "certain difficulties" would prevent India from moving forward on the pact for the foreseeable future.

Efforts for a US-India nuclear pact, which would open India to inspections by the International Atomic Energy Agency, paved the way for Australia's uranium deal with India.

Medcalf said the US decision to work with India on nuclear issues triggered the Howard Government's policy change to also engage with India. "It was really only when the US turned around to accepting India's nuclear status, that most of the rest of the world could contemplate having a civilian nuclear relationship with India," he said.

Medcalf said that if Labour won the federal election, the impasse in talks regarding the Indo-US nuclear pact could "forestall any possible rift in Australian-India relationship" over Labour's pledge to abandon uranium sales. Times Reported on Wednesday.

However, The non-proliferation lobby in the United States has gone ballistic over Australia's readiness to sell uranium to India and has begun a concerted campaign to protest such a move.

Its plans include calling on the Australian public to oppose any such transfer by its government to New Delhi, which has not signed the Nuclear Nonproliferation Treaty.

Daryl Kimball, executive director of ACA and Leonard Spector, deputy director of the James Martin Center for Nonproliferation Studies, said official documents from the Australian Parliament show that the 1985 South Pacific Nuclear Free Zone Treaty bans Australian uranium exports to countries like India that have not signed the NPT.

"This move flagrantly contradicts Australia's long standing international nuclear nonproliferation commitments and should be reconsidered and reversed," Australian decision to sell uranium to India, "which is not a member of the NPT, has not signed the CTBT [Comprehensive Test Ban Treaty], and has refused to halt its production of plutonium for weapons, would violate Australia's past political and treaty commitments to the principle of full-scope international safeguards as a condition for supply of nuclear technology and material." Kimball said.

The bottom line of the entire drama is The sales of Uranium is worth billions in export dollars because India plans to use nuclear energy to meet its burgeoning power needs.

Source: (Times, Rediff and SMH)