Oz may sell uranium to India

However, Aussie PM John Howard also makes clear that India will have to adhere to certain safeguards for this.

Australia has indicated that it might sell Uranium to India, but has also made clear that New Delhi would have to adhere to certain safeguards for that.

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"Certainly our policy to date has been to prohibit sale to countries which are not signatories to the nuclear non-proliferation treaty, and that's why at the moment we couldn't, without changing policy, sell uranium to India, but we can to China," Australian Prime Minister John Howard said on Monday.

"But as time goes by, if India were to meet safeguard obligations, some Australians would see it as anomalous that we would sell uranium to China, but not India," he was quoted as saying.

Howard said India had first requested in March that it be permitted to import Australian uranium, and the request was still being considered by the Aussie government.

"I don't think there's anything that's happened to justify the re-emphasis on the issue, except that India has repeated its interest in buying Australian uranium," he said.

"That was communicated to me in March this year, but there's nothing that's happened since then that has altered the issues that were on the table then," he said.