16.10.08

Brazil, South Africa, Kazakhstan willing to sell uranium to India

More than a month after a global cartel lifted an embargo on atomic trade with New Delhi, Brazil and South Africa on Wednesday vigorously supported civil nuclear cooperation with India and agreed to sell it uranium. We have no objections to selling uranium to India," South African President Kgalema Motlanthe said when asked whether his country will sell uranium to India after the Sep 6 NSG waiver allowed New Delhi to resume atomic trade after 34 years.
Brazilian President Luiz Inacio Lula da Silva sidestepped the question as he chose to focus on the global financial crisis. But a senior Brazilian official said that Brazil will be "happy" to sell uranium to India as it actively campaigned for liberating New Delhi from global nuclear restrictions.
Both South Africa and Brazil have huge reserves of uranium and are planning a major expansion of their civilian nuclear power plants.South Africa's support for civil nuclear cooperation is specially significant as it gave up its incipient atomic weapons programme in the 1990s to join the Nuclear Non-Proliferation Treaty (NPT).Kazakhstan Deputy Foreign Minister Nurian Yermekbayev says his country is prepared to supply uranium to India to fuel its growing nuclear energy requirements.He said Kazakhstan supported the Nuclear Suppliers Group (NSG) waiver for nuclear business with India at its meeting in September.Kazakhstan, a former Soviet state that gained independence in 1991, has 15 percent of the world's uranium reserves and is tipped to be an important prospective seller for India. Australia, which has the world's largest uranium reserves, is restricted by its policy not to sell nuclear fuel to countries that have not signed the Nuclear Non-Proliferation Treaty (NPT).The strategically located Central Asian country already supplies uranium to Japan and China.

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