Fed: Chinese premier arrives in capital ahead of uranium meeting

AAP General News (Australia)
04-02-2006
Fed: Chinese premier arrives in capital ahead of uranium meeting

CANBERRA, April 2 AAP - China's Premier Wen Jiabao has arrived in Canberra ahead of
a meeting with Prime Minister John Howard on contentious uranium sales.

Mr Wen began his four-day tour of Australia last night in resource-rich Western Australia.

Today he visited an iron smelter in the Perth industrial suburb of Kwinana and the
Woodside Hydrocarbon Research Facility in suburban Bentley.

Australia and China are poised tomorrow to sign a nuclear safeguards agreement eight
months in the making to pave the way for the sale of Australian uranium.

Mr Wen and Mr Howard today both sought to reassure doubters the safeguards would be rigorous.

"In our bilateral cooperation we should establish a long-term, stable and fundamental
institutional and systematic safeguard," Mr Wen said through an interpreter in Perth.

Mr Howard said China was keen to protect its reputation.

"The safeguards that we have adopted are very rigorous and unless we are going to declare
to the world that we're not going to deal with anybody then ... in relation to uranium
we have to assume a certain degree of good faith," he told the Ten Network.

But he said the deal did not give China automatic exploration or investment rights
in the Australian uranium industry, despite reports Beijing expected it would.

"It's an issue that we would apply our foreign investment policy to," Mr Howard said.

"We're not talking about having a special deal for Chinese acquisitions in Australia."

Labor says the government should use Mr Wen's visit to develop a comprehensive strategy
for dealing with China by stating its position on the United States, Taiwan and Beijing's
human rights record.

Australia should also seek to influence the East Asian Summit and re-fund Asian languages
programs here, Labor says.

The East Asian Summit brings together Australia, the 10-member Association of South-East
Asian Nations, China, Japan, South Korea, India and New Zealand.

Last year, during a visit by Mr Howard to Beijing, the two countries began negotiations
on a free trade agreement which would help give Australian exporters access to China's
1.3 billion consumers.

The agreement could take years to finalise but Mr Wen's visit could move discussions
forward to the issue of market access.

Mr Wen arrived in Canberra at 8pm (AEST) today and was greeted by the prime minister.

He is scheduled tomorrow to meet with cabinet ministers, Governor-General Michael Jeffery,
Opposition Leader Kim Beazley and Queensland Premier Peter Beattie.

He flies out of Canberra on Tuesday morning to meet with NSW Premier Morris Iemma in Sydney.

Falun Gong practitioners, whose group is banned in China, will protest Mr Wen's visit.

AAP shh/rj/de

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