Terming Prime Minister Kevin Rudd's initiative of setting up nuclear disarmament commission as "half-baked", Australia's opposition party has said it was "an excuse to continue the ban on uranium sale to India".
"Rudd's proposed nuclear commission could be used as an excuse to continue the ban on selling uranium to India for generating electricity," the opposition foreign affairs spokesman Andrew Robb said.
The Howard government supported uranium exports to India, Labor banned the export because India was not a member of the NPT and has nuclear weapons.
Allowing India to generate clean electricity was a crucial environmental issue which needed to be dealt with quickly, Robb was qouted as saying by AAP.
"We're selling uranium to China and to Russia but not selling it to India for clean energy purposes, there seems to be a great inconsistency here," Robb said.
Last night, Rudd maintained his stand on uranium sale to India stating he stood firm by the decision till India signed the Non-Proliferation Treaty.
Robb welcomed the initiative of creating nuclear disarmament process but warned he was trying to do too much.
"There seems to be an announcement a day from Rudd, he seems to be doing so much he really runs the risk, I think, of achieving very little on so many fronts," Robb was qouted on a local radio.
"Rudd's proposals seem invariably to be half-baked. The Prime Minister should not make grant announcements before consulting extensively with other countries," he said.
Robb pointed to a plan to forge a new Asia-Pacific regional grouping as an example of Rudd's overcrowded agenda.
The anti-nuclear weapons push had some merit, he said, adding the existing nuclear Non-Proliferation Treaty (NPT) process had "stalled somewhat".
"But the nuclear non-proliferation field was already crowded," Robb said. In the past as well Robb had criticised Rudd of snubbing India stating, "India, too, had suffered at the hands of the Labour government, which refused to sell uranium to the tiger economy because it was not a party to the nuclear non-proliferation treaty (NPT)."
"The prime minister (also) abandoned Australia's commitment to the quadrilateral dialogue between India, the United States, Japan and Australia, again raising concerns, especially with India and Japan, about the Rudd government's China bias," he said.
