Australia for Formation of Trilateral Security Pact with U.S., India

Australia's foreign minister Wednesday backed the formation of a security pact with India and the United States, a tie-up that could fuel China's worries of being fenced in by wary neighbors.

A new trilateral pact bringing in India into a U.S.-Australian security tent was worth exploring because from little things big things grow, Foreign Minister Kevin Rudd said in an interview with the Australian Financial Review newspaper. The response from the Indian government has really been quite positive.

It was unclear why Rudd, a Mandarin-speaking Sinophile, would risk irritating Australia's top trade partner China which is already nervous that Obama's latest diplomatic push into the Asia-Pacific is part of broader U.S. policy to encircle it.

But Rudd earlier this month said Australia's security arrangements with the United States were not snap-frozen in time, and while China wanted to see the elimination of U.S. alliances in East Asia, Australia disagreed.

We are not going to have our national security policy dictated by any other external power. That's a sovereign matter for Australia, he said.

At a briefing in Beijing, the Chinese Foreign Ministry spokesman Hong Lei did not comment directly on Rudd's comments. Asked about the proposal, Hong said: China hopes that countries in the region will do more to promote regional peace, stability and development.

In a visit to staunch ally Australia this month, U.S. President Barack Obama also agreed with his host to explore the establishment of a joint naval base on Australia's Cocos Islands in the Indian Ocean. He denied it was aimed at countering a more assertive China.

But prominent Chinese military commentator, People's Liberation Army Major General Luo Yuan, said this week that Washington was clearly trying to fence in Beijing.

The United States is making much of its 'return to Asia', has been positioning pieces and forces on China's periphery, and the intent is very clear - this is aimed at China, to contain China, Luo wrote on the Web site of the People's Daily newspaper.

China says its defence spending has grown sharply to around $95 billion, with an aircraft carrier recently launched and a stealth fighter aircraft unveiled amid renewed Chinese claims to parts of the Pacific and contested areas of the South China Sea.

Australia has embarked on its own $65 billion defence modernization including new assault ships, destroyers and warplanes, and is already involved in a tripartite economic and security dialogue with Japan and the United States.

U.S. officials have been particularly pushing Canberra to commit additionally to construction of a new fleet of 12 powerful missile submarines - possibly of U.S. design - in what would be the country's largest sole defence acquisition.

URANIUM SALES TO INDIA

A four-way security pact proposed by the United States in 2007 which would have drawn Australia, the United States, Japan and India together disintegrated when Japan and India floated concerns that it would look like an attempt to encircle China.

The idea of an Australian, Indian and U.S. trilateral security dialogue -- in part to counter China's rising naval power - has been strongly pushed by a trio of influential strategic think-tanks in all three countries, but has yet to be formally adopted by any government.

But Rudd told the Australian Financial Review that a looming weekend vote and expected approval by Australia's ruling Labor Party to drop a longstanding ban on uranium sales to non-Nuclear Proliferation Treaty countries like India could help clear the way for formation of a new pact.

Michael McKinley, a security expert at the Australian National University, said an India-U.S.-Australia security pact was obviously directed at China.

Alliances are always aimed at somebody. You don't have one just because you feel like regular cocktail parties, he said.

The influential Greens party, which controls the upper house balance-of-power, said a decision by the government to approve the sale of uranium to India would breach Canberra's obligations under a 1985 nuclear-free Pacific treaty.

The arguments against this appalling back-flip continue to stack up, while the nuclear stooges offer nothing more than a fistful of dollars in exchange for indulging in a dangerous and illegal trade. Australia is better than that, said Greens Senator Scott Ludlam.