IT is a high ambition of the Rudd Government to greatly deepen Australia's engagement with India. Well, it is about to get the opportunity to do just that. This week, the Indian parliament passed a momentously important vote of confidence in the Government of Manmohan Singh.
This vote could be a pivot point in modern history. It was all about India's nuclear co-operation deal with the US. That Singh won the vote means that deal proceeds through its next vital stages, during which Australia, specifically the Rudd Government, will face two moments of decision that will be crucial for us.
In 2005, Singh agreed the deal with the Bush administration. Singh's Government was a coalition of his Congress Party and a range of parties on the Left. Its main opposition is the Hindu fundamentalist party, the BJP, on the Right. And then there are a range of regional parties of no fixed ideological address.
India is not a signatory of the nuclear non-proliferation treaty and is not one of the five accepted nuclear weapons states (the US, Britain, France, Russia and China). But it possesses a nuclear weapons arsenal, so the world will not trade in nuclear materials or technology with India. This has partly blighted India's peaceful nuclear energy program.
Under the deal India will separate its peaceful nuclear energy program from its weapons program. It will put the reactors devoted to the production of electricity under complete supervision by the International Atomic Energy Agency and commit to a voluntary moratorium on further tests of nuclear weapons.
In exchange the US will help India's peaceful nuclear energy program and will encourage other nations to engage in nuclear trade with India. France and Russia will sell nuclear reactors to India.
The deal was stalled for a long time because the left parties supporting Singh, especially the communists, hated it as they saw it drawing India into the US's strategic camp. The BJP opposed the deal, saying it gave away too much Indian sovereignty.
There, it seemed, we were stuck. But Singh - one of the most admirable men involved in international politics, a technocrat economist by profession, a politician by accident, and the true father of India's economic reforms - struck out against the left parties.
He proceeded with the deal and they deserted his Government. Now, in a magnificent democratic moment, he has won a decisive vote of confidence. There was a fierce and passionate debate in parliament. Much of it was of the highest quality, some of it was of the lowest farce. Some MPs brought wads of cash into the parliament saying they had been offered bribes for their vote. But no one has ever doubted Singh's personal integrity and no one does here.
It is worth pausing to praise Indian democracy. We all have a huge stake in India's success. The confidence vote shows that even big, raucous democracies can make fundamental strategic decisions. With the resurgence of tyranny as a political ideology in Russia and China, it is absolutely critical that India succeed in combining democracy and development. And this vote gives that combination a huge shot in the arm.
The mechanics of the deal means that it will now be considered by the IAEA, perhaps as soon as next week. The IAEA is expected to provide a special set of arrangements for India.
This may be complicated by a last-ditch effort from Pakistan to get the deal scuttled. But last night the smart money was on the IAEA approving the special arrangements for India.
Then the deal must be approved by the Nuclear Suppliers Group. Here's where Australia comes in. With something like 40 per cent of the world's known uranium reserves, Australia is a key member of the NSG. So far, the Rudd Government has not said whether it will support the US-India deal at the NSG or oppose it.
It has however hinted that it would support the deal at the NSG, a hint Foreign Minister Stephen Smith repeated yesterday. Certainly Australia could kiss goodbye forever the idea of any decent relationship with India if it opposes the deal at the NSG.
Accepting the deal at the NSG would not commit Australia to supplying uranium to India. However, that will be the next big question.
If the NSG can be sorted out in the next six weeks or so, the Indians are still hopeful that they can get the deal to the US Congress for final ratification by September. It would also need a further ratification in the Indian parliament. US Democratic presidential candidate Barack Obama has indicated he will not seek to renegotiate the deal. Republican John McCain will also support the deal.
Opposition foreign affairs spokesman Andrew Robb has effectively homed in on the contradiction between the Rudd Government selling uranium to China - which has a terrible, though not recent, record of nuclear proliferation - while refusing to sell uranium to India, which has never passed on nuclear technology to anyone.
The Howard government had decided in favour of selling uranium to India. It is fair to say this debate has not yet moved beyond the specialists. But the Rudd Government will face a deep contradiction between supporting the US-India deal in the NSG, then saying it will not sell uranium to India. It will face an even bigger contradiction between its concern with greenhouse gas emissions and taking action, by refusing uranium to India, that impedes the development of clean energy.
Singh told the Indian parliament: "India needs to grow at 10 per cent to get rid of chronic poverty, ignorance and disease ... A basic requirement is the availability of energy ... We must make full use of atomic energy, which is a clean, environment-friendly source of energy.
"All over the world there is growing realisation of the importance of atomic energy to meet the challenge of energy security and climate change."
In his speech, Singh listed 10 countries with which India has particularly good relations. Australia was not among them.
I suspect that very soon we will enter the top 10 with a bullet or sink to a previously unimagined place of infamy in the Indian mind. This Indian parliamentary vote was mighty important for us, too.
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