Sydney - Events in Georgia show Russian Prime Minister Vladimir Putin can't be trusted to abide by an undertaking not to use Australia uranium to make nuclear weapons, a Canberra parliamentary committee said Monday.

"I don't know if you've looked on the TV into Vladimir Putin's eyes," Treaties Committee chairman Kelvin Thomson said. "He's one tough son-of-a-gun and I don't think he cares about what we think. Recently he's taken South Ossetia and another province off Georgia, and there's no real come-back over that."

The committee is considering the ratification of a deal struck last year by the former conservative government that clears sales of uranium to Russia so long as exports are used for civilian purposes.

"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 come back at all," the ruling Labor Party's Thomson said.

A 1990 agreement provides for Australian uranium to be processed in Russia, which is a signatory to the Nuclear Non-Proliferation Treaty (NPT).

When then foreign minister Alexander Downer struck the deal with Russia last year, he said it was unlikely that Russia would not abide by its international agreements.

"I don't think Russia would want to become a rogue state and break international law," Downer said. "It would lead to a collapse in their relations with Australia and probably with an awful lot more countries. I don't think there is any danger of that."

Stephen Smith, Downer's successor, said the situation in Georgia would be taken into account when the government looked at ratification of the treaty.

"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 relations with the Russian Federation," Smith told Parliament.

Australia has 40 per cent of the world's known reserves of uranium and exports to 36 countries. Labor has baulked at selling uranium to India because Delhi is not a signatory to the NPT treaty. Last year exports to China began. (dpa)