Australian PM calls for uranium exports to India

Prime Minister Julia Gillard on Tuesday has called on her ruling party to overturn its ban on Australia exporting uranium to India for peaceful purposes.

The center-left Labor Party government came to power in 2007 and immediately ended Australia's negotiations with India on starting a nuclear trade because India has not signed the Nuclear Nonproliferation Treaty.

But Gillard wrote in an opinion piece in The Sydney Morning Herald newspaper on Tuesday that she wanted Labor to change its policy at its annual nation conference next month.

"It is time for Labor to modernize our platform and enable us to strengthen our connection with dynamic, democratic India," she wrote.

The trade with India should comply with International Atomic Energy Agency conditions and carry strong bilateral undertakings that the uranium will be only used for peaceful purposes.

Gillard's stance has been met by opposition within her party and from the environmental Greens party whose support is crucial to the minority government maintaining power.

But Sen. Doug Cameron, leader of a Labor faction opposed to the policy reversal, conceded that he did not have sufficient numbers to maintain the status quo at the party conference.

Greens leader Sen. Bob Brown warned that selling uranium to India would add to a "nuclear arms race."

Australia, which holds 40 percent of the world's known uranium reserves, does not sell uranium on the open market and bans nuclear power generation at home.

But it sells uranium solely for power generation under strict conditions that ban any military applications in bilateral trade agreements with the United States, China, Taiwan, Japan, South Korea and several European countries.