Australia is reconsidering a pact to sell uranium to Russia following its military push into Georgia, Foreign Minister Stephen Smith warned on Monday. Speaking as the head of a parliamentary committee examining the deal that would allow sales of uranium for use in Russia’s civil nuclear power industry, expanding on them terms of a 1990 agreement, raised fears the yellowcake could be diverted for nuclear weapons use.

Smith told parliament that Australia would take into account Russia’s actions in Georgia and the current state of Moscow’s ties with Canberra when deciding whether to ratify the pact signed by the two countries last year. “When considering ratification, the government will take into account not just the merits of the agreement but recent and ongoing events in Georgia and the state of Australia’s bilateral relationship with the Russian Federation,” Smith said.

Smith said he made Australia’s views clear to Russia’s ambassador when he summoned the envoy last week to call on Moscow to pull its troops in Georgia back to the positions they held before the conflict began on August 8.

He also criticised Russia’s decision to recognise the independence of the Georgian rebel regions of South Ossetia and Abkhazia as unhelpful.

“I think that we could supply uranium to him and if he changed his mind about the uses to which he was going to put it, I don’t think we’d have any effective comeback at all,” Kelvin Thompson, who chairs the parliamentary treaties committee, said.