Reiterating its commitment to honour the 2009 pact to supply uranium to India at the earliest, Namibia has asked New Delhi to enter into similar agreements with other countries to convince the member-states of the African Nuclear Weapon Free Zone Treaty (ANWFZT).
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Two Memorandums of Understandings (MoU) were signed between India and Namibia in Windhoek on Thursday during the final leg of President Pranab Mukherjee’s three-nation visit.
“Regarding uranium, there is a proposal which has been pending at their end basically because of African Union decisions”. Addressing the media after bilateral engagements, Secretary Economic Relations in Ministry of External Affairs (MEA) Amar Sinha informed that the issue of Uranium supply was one of prominent features of the talks. “So eventually if we actually meet our requirements from non-Namibian sources, it will be a loss for the Namibian industry”, he said. “They are symbols of the soft power of India and unofficial cultural ambassadors of their country”, he said. On the first day of his two day visit to the nation, Mukherjee held one-to-one dialogue with his counterpart Ouattara which was followed by delegation level talks. The Vice President of India recently visited Morocco and Tunisia.
“We are one of the largest users of the diamonds in terms of the polishing and finishing but it doesn’t comes directly to us and I don’t think there is possibility right now because they have a long term commitment with DeBeers”.
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According to the officials at the meeting, the Namibian President suggested that the Indian firms could explore the possibility of uranium mining in his country. The Prime Minister would be visiting some other countries in Africa shortly.
