WELLINGTON (RNZI/PINA) — Australian Foreign Minister Alexander Downer has told Nauru’s President Rene Harris he is hopeful asylum seekers will soon leave the island.
The two men have met in Adelaide to discuss Nauru’s involvement in Australia’s so-called Pacific Solution.
The meeting follows an attack by Harris in which he described Australia’s decision to process asylum seekers offshore as a Pacific nightmare. He said Australia had not kept him informed of progress in the processing and had been slow delivering promised aid.
However, following the meeting, Harris said the nightmare was over.
He said Downer had told him that the processing on Nauru would hopefully be completed by the end of this month and that Australia would be offering a financial package to help unaccepted asylum seekers return home
Australia—faced with thousands of mainly Middle Eastern and Afghan asylum seekers trying to reach its shores with help from people smugglers—last year used its military to stop their boats.
It dealt with Nauru and Papua New Guinea to set up processing centers to hold asylum seekers while their status was decided.
The Nauru government—facing a growing economic crisis as the country’s phosphate wealth begins to run out—desperately needed Australian aid to maintain services.
The day before the Downer-Harris talks in Adelaide, the United Nations High Commission for Refugees revealed that almost 200 of 244 Afghan asylum seekers on Nauru did not meet the requirements of the 1951 Refugee Convention. They would be expected to return to their country of origin, it said.
