New Delhi, September 01: Australian Deputy Prime Minister Julia Gillard is on a damage control mission to India. Gillard is leading a high-level delegation on her five-day visit to New Delhi and Chennai.
Her visit has assumed significance after a spate of attacks on Indian students in Australia which has strained the relations between two countries.
Gillard, who is also the Australian Education Minister, met Union Human Resource Development Minister Kapil Sibal.
The two discussed several measures including more police specifically to protect Indian students after some reports claimed that Indians applying for admission to Australian educational institutes may have halved this year because of the attacks.
They also discussed the issues of compensation to all students who have been attacked, re-registration for all colleges so low-quality colleges are shut down and accommodation to Indian students in better colleges.
An annual meetings of Indian and Australian education officials and universities is also planned
Speaking to CNN-IBN, Gillard said Australia had zero tolerance for violence.
“We talked about possibility of dialogue which will be attended by our ministers and representatives of each nation’s universities and business communities. Australian government and nation has zero tolerance for violence against Indian students or anyone,” said Gillard
She also made it clear that Australia’s long-stated stand of selling uranium to only Nuclear Non-Proliferation Treaty (NPT) signatories was “not aimed” at India.
“I can assure that Australia’s NPT stand is not aimed at India. It is our long-stated stand that Australia will sell Uranium only to countries that are signatories to the NPT. I assure you it is not aimed at India, which has a good non-proliferation record,” Gillard was quoted as saying by PTI.
However, she did not elaborate if her country would change its stand anytime in the near future or when NPT comes up for a review sometime next year.
—PTI