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 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)

This CNS piece 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.