Australian foreign minister visits India
Updated
As the Pentagon admitted its pessimism over Afghanistan, Australian foreign minister Stephen Smith began a visit to the region. Mr Smith is visiting India, where he was asked if Canberra supports America's view that Pakistan border areas must be hit if the war against the Taliban is to be won.
Presenter: Jim Middleton
Speaker: Australian foreign minister Stephen Smith
- Listen:
- Windows Media
SMITH: We certainly say as we have for some time that that border area, the Afghanistan-Pakistan border area is the current hotbed of international terrorism. It's more than just a bilateral issue between Afghanistan and Pakistan, it has regional and international community implications. It also has serious implications for the nearly 11-hundred troops that we have in Afghanistan. So that's an issue that the regional and international community needs to come to grips with, certainly so far as we're concerned we've been speaking directly to the Pakistan government. I fully intend to go to Pakistan in the first half of next year to talk about these issues, but also Australia's general relationship with Pakistan. So this is a serious issue and it's one that Pakistan and Afghanistan and the international community have to address itself to.
MIDDLETON: It's a pessimistic outlook on the part of Admiral Mike Mullen isn't it, if the Pakistanis won't allow cross border operations that you can hold the Taliban, but you can't win?
SMITH: Well it's quite clear that what's been occurring is that the extremists, the terrorists, the Taliban move across that border area for respite and then return. And so clearly both Pakistan and Afghanistan and the international community have to come to grips with that. Certainly it needs to be done in consultation and in conjunction with both Pakistan and Afghanistan, and one of the things that encouraged me during the week was that the new Pakistani President as his first effective action sat down with President Karzai from Afghanistan and made the point that he regarded this as his highest priority. And that's certainly welcome news for Australia. We do want Pakistan to address this very serious and difficult issue. Now there have been difficulties in that border area in the so-called FATA (Federally Administered Tribal Areas)
areas for a considerable period of time and border disputes and border difficulties in that area have been around for hundreds of years, not just the last half dozen. But it is absolutely essential for Pakistan to come to grips with this difficulty, and from what the new President has been saying, certainly the rhetoric is there and we hope that it's met with concerted action and activity.
MIDDLETON: You're meeting the Indian Prime Minister and the Foreign Minister, do you expect that you'll be lobbied again on Australian uranium sales to India, especially now that the Nuclear Suppliers Group has approved India's deal with the United States?
SMITH: Well I certainly expect in the normal course of events that we'll have a conversation about the Nuclear Suppliers Group decision. Australia adopted a positive and constructive approach in the Nuclear Suppliers Group, as we did in the International Atomic Energy Agency board of governors' meeting the month before, and we supported a consensus and we welcomed the decision. And Indian officials have already made it clear to me and to Australia that the government of India very much warmly appreciates the role that Australia played in the Nuclear Suppliers Group. So far as uranium is concerned, the Indian government understands the Australian government's longstanding party policy decision, which is we do not export uranium to a country that's not a party to the Nuclear Non Proliferation Treaty, just as I and the Australian government understands India's longstanding public policy position that it's not proposing to join the Nuclear Non Proliferation Treaty. But these are things well known to both sides, in any relationship there are from time to time things that you agree to disagree about or where there's a graduation of view. But I'm not expecting either Australia or India to extensively revisit what are well known and longstanding political and policy decisions of the respective governments.
MIDDLETON: You mentioned party policy a couple of times there, isn't Australia's refusal to sell uranium to countries which haven't signed the Nuclear Non Proliferation Treaty simply holding government policy hostage to opposition within the Australian Labor Party to change?
SMITH: Well it's government policy because the Australian Labor Party won the last election and we formed a government and we are true to that policy platform which has been of longstanding and anyone who has followed that issue over a very long period of time in Australian domestic politics knows that it's been a particularly difficult policy and political issue, not just for my political party but for Australians generally. But there's a broader and wider point; this is just one commodity in one particular industry, it's one issue in a vast array of issues through a relationship now which is primed to go to a new level.
The first formal remarks I made as Foreign Minister, I said that I wanted to take our relationship with India to a new level. That reflects the rise of India this century as a great power and the NSG's consensus to approve the civil and nuclear arrangements for India also reflect that that the rise of India as a great power. So it's absolutely essential for Australia to take India to the frontline of its international relationships, and there's a vast array of complementary policy issues that we have in common; food and food security's one, energy and energy security generally is another, but also the vast array now of extensive economic investment and trade and relations between our two countries, not just in commodities or resources but in information technology and scientific and technical areas, and also an explosion of interest in education. Australia's now the second largest single destination for Indian students studying overseas. So the people-to-people, the exchanges between our two countries now are primed to go to the next level of what's been historically a good relationship, but we want to take it to the frontline of our partnerships and that's an objective that India also agrees with.
