Yahoo News
Tuesday December 8, 1:12 PM
Clinton adviser urges Australia to consider being world's nuclear dump.
SYDNEY, Dec 8 (AFP) - Australia should consider an international plan to become a
dumping ground for the world's nuclear waste, a top adviser to US President Bill
Clinton said
Tuesday, drawing immediate protests from environmentalists.
Australia is in a unique position because of its geography and political stability to
help the world
solve the problem of where to store nuclear waste from bombs dismantled at the end
of the Cold
War, according to Clinton's special envoy on weapons of mass distruction, Robert
Gallucci.
"If Australia could appreciate the concept and decide it was in the national interest
there would be
enormous benefits for the world," he told The Australian newspaper.
Australia was one of the few places in the world with the political and geological
stability necessary
for such a sensitive gatekeeping job, Galluci said.
But environmentalists objected Tuesday, saying saddling Australia with the world's
nuclear waste
was short-sighted.
"The government of Australia has only been around for 99 years," Larry O'Loughin,
a campaigner
for the Australian Conservation Foundation, told AFP.
"It's a very optimistic outlook to say Australia's going to have a stable political
outlook for 200,000
years. That's just farcical."
Galluci, dean of the prestigious Georgetown University school of foreign service,
said he had met
Australian prime minister John Howard earlier this year but said they had not
discussed the issue of
nuclear waste.
The Australian government has denied holding ministerial talks with the US on a
possible waste
dump and has offered no public support for the plan, a move that would draw the
immediate ire of
environmentalists.
But the Clinton adviser said the White House had been briefed on an US company's
proposal to
establish a massive nuclear waste dump in remote parts of Australia's west and
south, a plan he
backed.
"I don't think the US government is officially aware but there have been informal
discussions about
an approach to the Australian government at various levels," he told the newspaper.
"Australia could play a pretty unique role if Australia was willing to do it."
A video tape issued by Seattle-based Pangea promoting the idea of a massive
Australian dump was
leaked to Australian environmentalists last week, forcing the company to go public
with its plans.
According to the company, only two countries in the world -- Argentina and Australia
-- have the
needed stable geography and political systems for a nuclear dump like the one it is
proposing.
