CANBERRA (Pacnews) — The main opposition party in Australia claims that Prime Minister John Howard’s Pacific Solution for asylum seekers has harmed Canberra’s relationship with key South Pacific neighbors.
Nauru President Rene Harris says the deadline on an agreement with Australia to take in about a thousand asylum seekers has passed without comment.
He has also accused Australia of not keeping its promise to provide around A$30 million ($17 million) in goods and services.
The government has rejected those claims, but the Labor Party’s foreign affairs spokesman Kevin Rudd claims they are more evidence that the Pacific Solution is a failure.
“We have already seen the tensions which the Pacific solution as implemented by the Howard government has created within PNG politics, through the Manus Island deal. We now see the same happening in relation to Nauru as well,” Rudd said.
The Australian government is scrambling to patch up relations with Nauru after Harris complained that Canberra had failed to keep him informed about the fate of more than one-thousand asylum seekers who remain detained on the tiny Pacific island.
