Govt turned down uranium purchase opportunity from Kazakhstan

[Naveed Yaseen]

* Pakistan did not buy nuclear fuel because of budgetary constraints

Daily Times Monitor

LAHORE: The government refused last year to sanction the purchase of uranium from Kazakhstan citing budgetary constraints, according to a report published on the International Analyst Network website on Tuesday.

According to the unconfirmed report, negotiators from Afghanistan and Pakistan had reached an agreement on the sale of nuclear fuel from the uranium-rich Kazakhstan to Pakistan “some time around late 2008”.

An unidentified government source cited in the article “referred to a Central Asian nation” but did not name it. “She was most probably referring to Kazakhstan,” according to the author of the report.

The reported agreement “apparently preceded” an agreement between India and Kazakhstan in January 2009 in which New Delhi agreed to buy up to 2,500 tonnes of uranium.

The Pakistan-Kazakhstan agreement did not violate any international laws because Pakistan has not signed the Nuclear Non-Proliferation Treaty, but the report says the only problem was “the usual opposition from US and Britain, and Australia”.

“This was Pakistan’s opportunity to break [a] fake embargo imposed by the US,” the report says. “But President Zardari refused to authorise the release of funds for the deal citing budgetary constraints.” The report says nuclear energy is essential to sustain Pakistan’s growing economy, and that the Pakistani government’s move could “possibly prove to be a blunder that Pakistan might regret in the future”.

http://www.dailytimes.com.pk/default.asp...009_pg7_13