Melbourne: Former Australian Prime Minister Malcolm Fraser on Monday strongly criticised Julia Gillard for amending the long-standing Labor policy to sell uranium to India calling it a "shameful abject submission to US pressure."
In an opinion piece published in 'The Age', Fraser, who led the country during 1975-83 as a Prime Minister, said "Canberra's abject submission to US pressure is shameful."
He said Gillard has been "dead wrong" in doing so and changing the policy through a deeply divided ALP nationalconference last weekend was not smart politics, but a failure of leadership.
"The unequivocal longer-term consequences of this policy backflip are aggravating India's nuclear arms race with Pakistan and eroding the already failing brakes on proliferation of nuclear weapons," Fraser said, adding that nuclear war between the south Asian neighbours was not some theoretical possibility, but a real and growing danger. ...
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08:52 AM, Dec 12, 2011
