SINGAPORE, Aug 12: Australia will support a civilian atomic energy deal between India and the United States at a meeting of key nuclear supplier states, Prime Minister Kevin Rudd said here on Tuesday.

Rudd’s statement comes ahead of an August 21 meeting in Vienna of the 45-member Nuclear Suppliers Group on the deal, under which the United States will provide energy-starved India with nuclear fuel and technology.

Australia is a key member of the NSG, which must approve the US-India deal in order for it to proceed. The US Congress must also ratify the agreement.

“We have already indicated to the most recent meeting of the International Atomic Energy Agency board of governors that the government of Australia would not stand in the way of such an agreement,” Rudd said after giving a lecture.

He said Canberra had communicated its decision “diplomatically to our friends in Washington and to our friends in New Delhi.” Earlier this month, the IAEA — the UN’s atomic watchdog — approved an inspections agreement with India that was needed for the deal to move forward.

Australia also sits on the IAEA’s 35-member Board of Governors.

US President George W. Bush and Indian Prime Minister Manmohan Singh unveiled the agreement, which would see India enter the fold of global nuclear commerce after being shut out for decades, in 2005.

New Delhi has said the accord is important if India is to meet its rising energy needs to fuel its fast-growing economy.

But critics have argued it undermines the nuclear Non-Proliferation Treaty (NPT) because it gives a country outside the agreement, and which developed atomic bombs in secret and conducted a nuclear test in 1974, access to US nuclear fuel and reactor technology.

The NSG’s rules ban trade with states that have not signed the NPT.

Australia holds the world’s largest known reserves of uranium and has a long-standing policy of refusing to sell the nuclear material to countries which have not signed the treaty. —AFP