NEXT month's ALP national conference will be asked to make a decision of global importance: whether to back Prime Minister Julia Gillard's call for Australia to export uranium to India. Australia must decide whether to stand with the vast majority of nations in supporting the principle of nuclear disarmament, or to stand with those who continue to undermine it.

India is not the responsible nuclear citizen that many would have us believe. It has a long history of broken promises and reckless conduct relating to its nuclear programs. In 1974, for instance, the Nuclear Suppliers Group was set up in response to India's ''peaceful'' nuclear weapons testing at the Pokhran testing range. The enriched plutonium required for this explosion was created using a Canadian ''CIRUS'' test reactor and ''heavy water'' supplied by the US. These materials were provided on the basis of India's pledge to use the reactor for peaceful purposes only.

Illustration: Andrew Dyson

We need to be clear about what is being proposed here. The tensions between India and Pakistan are real. The threat of nuclear war is real. India's most recent nuclear test involved the detonation of a thermonuclear device with three times the yield of the ''Little Boy'' bomb used at Hiroshima in World War II. The test was conducted at a time of high tensions with bordering Pakistan. After the explosion, former Pakistani foreign minister Gohar Ayub said India and Pakistan were locked in a ''headlong arms race on the subcontinent''. If next month's national conference changes Labor's policy on uranium to India, Australia would be fuelling that arms race.

India continues to give assurances that imported materials are solely for civilian use, yet it refuses to sign the Comprehensive Test Ban Treaty and is yet to ratify the International Atomic Energy Safeguards Agreement.