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U.N. Chief Says Australian Plan For Refugee Boat Acceptable
KINSHASA, Sept 2 (News Agencies) - United Nations Secretary General Kofi Annan said on Sunday he accepted Australia's plans for dealing with hundreds of refugees stranded on a ship in the Indian Ocean, but criticized Australia for not taking in the asylum seekers.
"We find their arrangements acceptable. My main concern is that the refugees are treated humanely... We have been given assurances by the Australians they intend to do that," Annan told a news conference in the capital of the Democratic Republic of Congo.
Australia has refused to take in the 438 mainly Afghan refugees - who have been stranded in sweltering heat on an overcrowded Norwegian cargo boat for a week - and has instead floated a plan to send them to other countries.
That involves taking the boatpeople, who include pregnant women and numerous children, to Papua New Guinea, as a staging post en route to New Zealand and Nauru, where their asylum claims will be processed.
But Canberra's plan has been held up by an Australian court injunction requested by international and domestic civil liberties groups, who argue the refugees' claims should be processed under Australia's legal system.
The injunction was granted Saturday and extended Sunday by Federal Court judge Anthony North to civil liberties groups.
The groups also assert the asylum seekers were being held in unlawful detention at gunpoint by elite SAS troops who stormed the Tampa when it tried to sail into the Australian territory of Christmas Island last week.
Prime Minister John Howard announced Sunday the troop carrier HMAS Manoora was ready to take the asylum seekers to Port Moresby, capital of Papua New Guinea, as a staging post en route to New Zealand and Nauru.
But he admitted the court action was preventing their transfer.
Australian officials say if the case is initially successful it could mean the boatpeople staying where they are for days or even weeks as the appeal goes through a process that could end in the High Court.
Howard told reporters in Sydney the asylum seekers would sail on the Manoora to Port Moresby in a transfer that could start on Sunday and possibly finish by Monday.
The Manoora reached Christmas Island on Sunday and was being prepared to begin the evacuation from the freighter, which has been idling off the territory since being refused entry last Monday.
The predominantly Afghan boatpeople have sweltered under a searing tropical sun on the cramped and unsanitary decks of the freighter since it rescued them from a sinking boat off Indonesia a week ago.
On Christmas Island itself, fascination with the plight of the boatpeople showed no sign of abating with locals setting up their regular Sunday evening barbeques along the waterfront in order to have a clear view of the Tampa.
As night fell, troops continued to load supplies on board the Manoora including water, blankets and food. A Sea King helicopter had spent much of the day ferrying supplies from the island to the vessel.
Under the plan announced by Howard on Saturday, 150 of the boatpeople would go to New Zealand to have their claims assessed while the remainder would head to the South Pacific island of Nauru, the world's smallest nation.
Those found by New Zealand to be genuine refugees would stay there, while those assessed as genuine in Nauru would go to countries including Australia.
Nauru (population of 12,000) measures only 21 square kilometers and is described in the Lonely Planet travel guide as a "wasteland of mind-boggling proportions" because of phosphate diggings.
While seen as success for the government by Australians who are solidly behind a hardline attitude to boatpeople, the plan has been condemned by civil liberties activists in Australia and overseas.
Norway, where the Tampa is registered, protested about what it said was an undermining of U.N. conventions on refugees.
"We stress what we have stressed all along, namely the importance for Australia to stick to all international conventions and its international obligations," a foreign ministry spokesman in Oslo told Agence France-Presse (AFP).
Howard told reporters that government officials were en route to Nauru to assist with arrangements for a tent city to accommodate the asylum seekers.
Amnesty International and the Human Rights and Equal Opportunity Commission joined the court action initiated by the Victorian Council for Civil Liberties on Sunday.
The Australian government opened its case by advising it would seek damages should the application fail, but Judge North said mention of damages at this stage could be seen as pressuring the applicants.
"It would be unfortunate if the applicants were forced into a retreat by a request for an undertaking on damages," he said, adding that the motives were altruistic and they were working voluntarily on a human rights issue.
Howard told reporters: "We have a very strong view about the action that's been brought, but that view is being put in the Federal Court by the Commonwealth counsel.
"Self-evidently if there is a court order that people can't be shifted, we have to take account of that, and that is my understanding.
"But I want it to be known, and the court has been informed, that the Manoora is now ready to take people."
Howard said the asylum seekers would be more comfortable on the Manoora which he said could adequately accommodate all of the people taken from the Tampa and had the range to undertake the transfer.
The asylum seekers described themselves as being under the threat of death "every moment" in a letter they handed to the Norwegian ambassador to Australia, Ove Thorsheim, when he visited the ship on Friday.
In the letter, tendered to the Federal Court, the group also described themselves as escapees from genocide and massacre who had no alternative but to leave their "beloved homeland" to seek asylum.
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