I’m late to the party on the controversy, but I feel the need to post some primary source documents about the “Treaty of Rarotonga”:http://www.state.gov/www/global/arms/treaties/spnfz.html#1 and its relevance to the sale of Australian uranium to India.

The issue is that Article 4 of the treaty prohibits states-parties from providing “source or special fissionable material” to ” any non-nuclear-weapon State unless subject to the safeguards required by Article III.1 of the NPT.” The treaty also requires states-parties “to support the continued effectiveness of the international non-proliferation system based on the NPT and the IAEA safeguards system.”

(“h/t ACA”:http://armscontrolnow.org/2011/12/03/australia-part-of-the-nonproliferation-solution-or-part-of-the-problem/#more-2632)

This “CNS piece”:http://cns.miis.edu/stories/pdfs/070827.pdf from a few years back contains original documents with official Australian statements indicating that the SPNFZ Treaty prohibits uranium sales to states without comprehensive safeguards agreements.

I’d be interested to see a counter-argument from the Australian government – I’ve not yet found one.