China and Egypt Reach Nuclear Energy Agreement

China and Egypt agreed to co-operate on the use of nuclear energy, state media said, in a development that could rile the United States.

The agreement was announced in a joint communique following talks in Beijing Tuesday between Egyptian President Hosni Mubarak and his Chinese counterpart Hu Jintao, the official Xinhua news agency reported.  "Egypt is not going to produce nuclear weapons," said He Wenping, an expert on Africa relations at the ChineseAcademy of Social Sciences, the top government think tank.  "It won't affect the international community, because Egypt will use the nuclear energy peacefully," she explained.

The agreement comes at a time when both have announced plans to step up their nuclear energy capacity.  China has an ambitious plan to increase its combined nuclear power capacity to 40,000 megawatts by 2020, a plan that will require about two 1,000 megawatt nuclear power plants to be built annually for the next 15 years. 

Egypt is reviving its nuclear program two decades after it was frozen, following an accident at the Chernobyl power plant in what was then the Soviet Union.  According to reports, Egypt is now looking to build at least one nuclear power station within 10 years.  Egypt is pursuing two separate purposes.  Although it is an exporter of oil, it wants to seek solutions to longer-term worries about energy security, but just as important, it also hopes to learn technological know-how from the Chinese. 

When Mubarak visited Russia last week, his Moscow hosts also signaled a willingness to cooperate with Egypt on nuclear energy.  "Egypt has made a decision to transfer to nuclear energy and build four stations," said Boris Alyoshin, head of Russia's federal industry agency.  "It is beyond doubt that we will take part in the tender and I think we have good chances of winning," Alyoshin said.

It is not the first time nuclear cooperation has been on the trilateral agenda between Cairo, Moscow and Beijing.  In the 1960s, Egypt sought technical assistance from China and the former Soviet Union as it attempted to develop a nuclear program to match research by Israel. However, both Beijing and Moscow turned down the request. 

In a shift of strategy, Cairo became a signatory of the Non-Proliferation Treaty in 1968 and now officially supports the elimination of nuclear weapons in the region.

It has sought to reassure the international community by insisting it would not import enriched uranium, amid the tense climate generated by the standoff with Iran and North Korea's October 9 nuclear test. 

Nonetheless, analysts said a nuclear alliance between Egypt and China and possibly Russia risked affronting Washington, Egypt's major ally.  "Egyptians know that this step can irritate the United States, but they don't want to be under the influence of the Americans on this issue," Emad Gad, of the Ahram Centre for Strategic Studies, told AFP.