Australia not planning to seek changes to NPT: PM

With the Indo-US nuclear deal expected to figure prominently in his talks with United States President George W Bush, Australian Prime Minister John Howard has said he is not seeking changes to the Non-proliferation Treaty to facilitate uranium sales to India.

Coverage: Indo-US Nuclear Tango

Howard, who is on a visit to US, told reporters in Washington that the sale of uranium to India for civil nuclear energy projects is expected to come up in his talks with the US President, Vice-President Dick Cheney, Energy Secretary Sam Bodman and Secretary of State Condoleezza Rice over the next few days.

"I am sure it will come up because it's an important issue," he said.

However, he said Australia was not planning to ask for changes to the NPT to allow the sales to go ahead.

No uranium sales to India: Australia

"We are not seeking any particular changes to it, no," he was quoted as saying in the official transcript of his interview to reporters in Washington.

Howard said, "With the rise of China and India in the Asia Pacific Region, clearly the challenge of handling Iran in an intelligent sensible way, the growing importance of the potential of nuclear energy, all of these are the sorts of things that we will talk about and they are the sort of things that an US President and an Australian prime minister should talk about on a regular basis."

Howard predicted much debate in Australia in the coming months about the nuclear issue, including within the Opposition as some Labor figures want the party's decades-old policy of banning any new uranium mines overturned.

"There will be a big debate in Australia in the months ahead regarding nuclear energy," he said, adding, "I think it is a debate we have to have. It has gone beyond the paradigm of the 1980s and there are some very interesting shifts of opinion within our own country."

"And because of the fact that we have the largest reserves of uranium of any country in the world, we are obviously somebody whose view will be sought and whose view is relevant," he said.