Canada to sell uranium to India

Canada's prime minister yesterday announced a breakthrough deal to supply uranium to India for electricity generation, putting behind decades of discord over India's surreptitious use of Canadian technologies to build atomic bombs.

The agreement was signed in Ottawa during a visit by Indian Prime Minister Narendra Modi -- the first Indian leader to visit Canada in 42 years, since Indira Gandhi.

The US$283 million contract is for the supply of 7.1 million pounds of uranium concentrate over the next five years, for use in a growing number of Indian nuclear power plants.

Canadian Prime Minister Stephen Harper said a nuclear cooperation agreement concluded in 2012 laid the groundwork for the two Commonwealth nations "to turn the page on what had been in our judgment an unnecessarily frosty relationship for too along."

The 2012 pact signed by Harper and Modi's predecessor, Manmohan Singh, allows Canadian companies to export nuclear materials for peaceful uses, in accordance with Canada's nuclear non-proliferation policy.

Its ratification had been delayed several years as the two nations could not agree on how to track India's use of nuclear material to ensure it was put to peaceful purposes.

New Delhi balked at Ottawa's demand to be allowed to monitor the safe use of its nuclear exports. In the end, the two countries agreed to set up a joint panel to supervise the exports.

New Delhi -- backed by US -- also won an exemption in 2008 from the Nuclear Suppliers Group, which governs global nuclear trade, to allow it to buy reactors and fuel from abroad -- even though it has not signed the non-proliferation treaty.