Australia seeks help from Sri Lanka on flow of asylum seekers

Sydney, Nov 8 : Releasing Tamils from camps and reintegrating them into Sri Lankan society would help staunch the flow of asylum seekers crossing the Indian Ocean, Australia Foreign Minister Stephen Smith said Sunday.

Smith, due in Colombo Monday, said more quickly emptying the camps where Tamils were living after being displaced this year at the end of Sri Lanka's 26-year civil war would deter the Tamil minority from leaving their homeland.

"I will reiterate Australia's view that, having won the war, Sri Lanka now needs to win the peace through political reform and reconciliation," Smith, who is to become the first Australian foreign minister to visit since 2003, said in a statement prior to his departure to Sri Lanka, where the Tamil minority said they fear persecution from the Sinhalese majority.

An estimated 250,000 Tamils are in detention camps six months after the Colombo government declared it had defeated the separatist insurgency led by the rebel Tamil Tigers.

Smith said he hopes his visit would help break an impasse that has seen Sri Lankan asylum seekers jeopardise good relations between Australia and Indonesia.

For more than two weeks, 78 Sri Lankans have been refusing to disembark from an Australian Customs vessel moored off Indonesia's Bintan Island and demanding that the Oceanic Viking take them to Australia.

At Jakarta's request, the asylum seekers were rescued in international waters three weeks ago and by rights should disembark in Indonesia.

Canberra wants them to leave the ship for internment in an Australian-funded immigration detention centre at Tanjung Pinang on Bintan Island near Singapore. Indonesia, which is prepared to take them in for processing, has ruled out the use of force to get them off the Australian ship.

The stalemate has whipped up controversy in Australia with some demanding troops be used to land the Sri Lankans and others arguing that Canberra should show compassion and accept them.

The imbroglio has dealt a blow to the popularity of Prime Minister Kevin Rudd, who has been unable to end the standoff.

Opposition upper house member Barnaby Joyce urged Rudd to end the stalemate. "If you want to show strength... then send the Oceanic Viking to Colombo, and you'll have made a strong statement."

Joyce, who is the de-facto leader of the Nationals, told local television that Rudd should not bow to pressure and let the asylum seekers have their refugee claims processed at the immigration detention centre on Australia's Indian Ocean territory of Christmas Island.

"That is in essence defeat," Joyce said of calls for the Sri Lankans to be interned on Christmas Island. "It means people have worked you out. They just hang about on the boat, and in the end, you will capitulate and you will land at Christmas Island."

The recent surge in arrivals of undocumented immigrants - more than 30 boats have arrived this year compared with seven for the whole of 2008 - has seen Rudd's two-year-old Labor government assailed from both sides of the political divide.

Stephen Fielding, a right-wing independent in the Canberra Parliament, urged Rudd to take a tougher line.

"This is our boat, it's been hijacked by the refugees, and the Rudd government hasn't got a clue what to do," Fielding said. "Those people trying to jump the queue should go to the back of the queue."

Ian Rintoul, a spokesman for the Refugee Action Coalition, has berated Rudd for insisting the asylum seekers be landed in Indonesia rather than be brought to Australia.

--IANS