Australia’s Abbott Wants Japan Trade Deal, India Uranium Sales

Australia will try to clinch a trade dealing with Japan, boosting ties with its second-largest trading partner after China, and will sell uranium to India under a Liberal-National government, opposition leader Tony Abbott said.

The coalition will build a “strong strategic partnership” with Japan, including stronger military links and a conclusion to free trade talks, and will “overturn Labor’s ban on uranium exports,” Abbott said today in a speaking to the Asialink-Asia Society forum in Canberra.

Abbott’s coalition, tied with Prime Minister Kevin Rudd’s Labor party in the polls in the lead up to a ballot that must be called by April, will also “work enthusiastically with China” and will not pretend the two nations have “important differences in the way we do things,” he said.

Australia, which is the third-largest uranium producers behind Kazakhstan and Canada, has the world’s biggest known uranium reserves, according to estimates from the World Nuclear Association. Rudd’s government does not allow uranium to be sold to India for energy use because the South Asian country hasn’t agreed the Nuclear Non-Proliferation Treaty.