It's good to hear from you too.
Leading from earlier where i was wondering if any nuclear weapon has been stationed in Taiwan ...
http://nsarchive.gwu.edu/news/19991020/
Not really sure why you provided that link. Although am a little confused why you are still talking about Taiwan.
That link seems to be made by, what I'd refer to as, hippies. That America has stored it's own nuclear weapons out side of the continental USA doesn't surprise me at all. To me that just seems logical.
Think you're making a pretty huge leap with your logic to try and infer that Taiwan has, or is developing, nuclear weapons based on that.
A US warship, which is carrying nuclear weapons, visiting a country would meet the requirement for that list the hippies came up with. Australia would make that list and it's been a very long time since we've been involved with nuclear weapons.
The reason that is mentioned is:
In India there is a electricity grid something akin to one nation national grid where all the grid is one. Simply put a nuclear station is used for electricity production and one would believe that uranium provided by Australia to such a grid be it USA and even India no matter where and how it is used theoretically any supply to such a grid in any amount complies that anywhere such nuclear weapon is used by the country Australia would have provided it. Unless a military nuclear facility is always disconnected from the "grid". This is a point where Australia, USA and even India has not thought about but anyway the reason i mention it is:
I have no idea what your are trying to say with this paragraph and the underlined part particularly confuses me.
Do you mean that because Australian uranium is used to generate electrical power, and electricity is required for nuclear weapons to operate, Australia is providing nuclear weapon states with the capability to use its weapons?
1. If nuclear weapon was stationed in Taiwan and it was a USA delivery system. The Australian uranium supplied to USA even in minisule amounts theoretically states that Australia provided a military weapon system to be used in Taiwan (and others). Did Australia evaluate its international laws and customs for such a variance. Does PRC state anything against Australia. Does USA state anything against Australia. This is frankly a fire-cracker along with the actual supply of Uranium to Taiwan by Australia.
Suspect (although neither actually know nor care) Australian uranium has been used in the nuclear weapons of; the USA, the UK and France, quite possibly the PRC too. All those countries are signatories to the whatever, so that would not be at variance with international law.
Fail to see how this is a "firecracker".
RN ships may have had some nukes on board when they docked in, say, Jamaica. The uranium in the weapons they had may have come from Australia. What does this have to do with India?
2. Has Taiwan tested a nuclear weapon and has capability for nuclear weapon test and is it illegal and dodgy:
http://www.chinanews.com/2000-1-7/26/14868.html
(you might need to use a translator)
3. There are 21 countries that recognize Taiwan to be a State.
One China policy clear states Status Quo needs to be maintained. And if one side has nuclear weapons that means the other must also (this would be only justification for Australia and USA to supply and support nuclear weapons and supply to Taiwan). Next look at the manufacturers of Taiwan nuclear plants. Is there any other country (you will notice one important name).
One would not be surprised later if it was announced that PRC by way of North Korea tested because of the above.
Yeah, I'm not going to bother to try and translate the story from China News. I'll take your word for it that it claims that Taiwan is developing nuclear weapons.
Don't get your point about North Korea, but your middle paragraph I'll respond to. Australia most definitely does not support Taiwan having nuclear weapons and, at least publically (and I'm 99% sure privately too), neither does the USA.
How India and Australia signed the nuclear agreement was done in a approach that was done systematically and carefully and India wanted it to be done that way with no shortcuts and in no hurry. It is important also for others that "try" and follow India path. It will be near impossible and extremely difficult. There needs not only be a track record consistent approach, but also stature and even clean hands.
Like you have mentioned how PRC and Taiwan got supply from Australia (no fan fare and dare one say no public analysis). Was it easy. Was it short cuts. Does it have mistakes and confound and even contradict what Australia said to India and even position ...
As to the systemic approach, sure. If that's the way India wants to do business that's great.
As to the supply of PRC and Taiwan, it may have contradicted what later happened in regards to India. But A) not so much as PRC is a signatory of that treaty which India isn' t and B) the deals were done by different governents. New governments contradict all sorts of positions of previous governments.
Looking at pricing points and economics is moving away from the reasoning. Also the value of the deal under a framework where India became a declared nuclear weapon state without any short cuts and misunderstandings and in a international regime where it was difficult and required careful planning. And with such a process i am not sure if it is such a simple fact that the deal is not favorable to india. It is a win win situation for australia and india relations.
Sure, I have no idea how favourable, or not, the details of the contract are to India as that would be massively secret.
You use the words dodgy which i find ironical. It implies that Australia does not have a independent policy (because why would they enter into a dodgy deal).
I meant it was dodgy as it was not illegal, but not in the spirit of the relevant law. Don't get what you mean by independent and the deal was obviously done for money. The Liberal party, which was in govt. when the Taiwan deal was made, are big friends with mining companies.
You sort of missed my point about the "dodginess" of the Taiwan deal and the delays in getting through the India deal. The Howard govt. wasn't allergic to bad press, and the media was not (in retrospect) that critical of them. Since then the Australian media has gone sort of crazy and by the time the negotiations with India about the sale of uranium had progressed to the stage that it was near to happening, critical stories of all politicians and politics had massively increased.
Perhaps I could explain what I'm trying to express by saying, if Taiwan had tried to buy uranium in, say 2010, it never would have happened as that deal was "dodgy". Post Howard govt, the less "dodgy" deal with India proved massively more difficult than the Taiwan sale.
Leave you with a final thought.:
http://disarmament.un.org/treaties/a/npt/china/acc/washington
Treaty on the Non-Proliferation of Nuclear Weapons (NPT)
Action Type Accession
Depositary Government of the United States of America
Date 17 March 1992
Note
On July 1, 1968, the Treaty was signed at Washington in the name of the Republic of China. An instrument of ratification of the Treaty on behalf of the Republic of China was deposited at Washington on January 27, 1970. Effective January 1, 1979, the United States recognized the People’s Republic of China as the sole legal government of China. The authorities on Taiwan state that they will continue to abide by the provisions of the Treaty and the United States regards them as bound by its obligations.
As I was saying in my first post to you. I'm not much of an expert on Taiwan. I get totally confused when trying to work out what kind of relationship that have PRC. So, I'm not really going to comment on that section as I don't understand enough about it.
And the Australia has to say out loud they believe in ONE CHINA POLICY. Why did Australia supply Uranium to Taiwan and PRC ??
Was it because India was intellectually on the right path. Where the PRC and Taiwan documents were not and ... can be called dodgy and done quickly !! Doing it the right way will get people to call you names but like i said doing it the right way takes time and the relationship out of that is better.
Not really sure who is getting called names and why that would be important. As I was saying before (on a totally different topic) Taiwanese are not lunatics like Pakistanis. They don't care if Australia's openly supports a one China policy, they are still our allies. And China's an important partner. If you think India's intellectually on the right pathy, great. Everyone's happy.