Australia to hold boatpeople talks with East Timor

Australia will send officials to Dili this week for talks on creating a processing centre for boatpeople in East Timor, foreign minister Stephen Smith said on Sunday.                                           
 

The officials would "start a detailed discussion" with East Timor's government about the proposal, floated last week by new p-rime minister Julia Gillard, said Smith in a TV interview.                   

The arrival of asylum-seekers on the country's remote northwestern shores is a hot political issue in Australia, where an election is due within months.                                           
 

Gillard, who ousted former prime minister Kevin Rudd in an internal party revolt late last month, is keen to be seen to be taking a strong stance on the issue.                                           

The conservative opposition has blamed an upsurge in boat arrivals, mainly Afghans and Sri Lankans sailing from Indonesia, on a soft policy by the Labor government.                                            

Smith told the Australian Broadcasting Corporation (ABC) that any plan for a regional processing centre for asylum-seekers would need regional and UN support.                                           

He rejected comparisons with the former conservative government's "Pacific solution" under which asylum-seekers were processed on the island nation of Nauru.                                           

"It needs to be more than just a detention centre, which Nauru was," Smith said.                                           

However, Gillard's announcement last week that she had discussed the issue with East Timor president Jose Ramos-Horta met with a mixed response, with some Timorese figures saying they did not want their country to become a "prison island".                                           

Media reports have said that Papua New Guinea was also under consideration, but Smith said Australia was currently only talking to East Timor.