Toribiong who will be attending the Pacific Island Forum in Vanuatu this August said that he will bring up the issue during a bilateral meeting with the Australian leader in the meeting.
He said that he is scheduled to meet with PM Gillard during the forum and among the issues he wanted to bring up is about the Uighurs’ plea for a permanent home.
“I plan to bring up if appropriate at least one of the Uighurs who have married an Australian citizen. I want to find out the policy and laws of Australia regarding the spouse’s status,” Toribiong stated.
He added that he will also raise “in general those who are interested in joining the Uighur community in Australia.”
He said his request will be “soft.”
Earlier the Uighurs has expressed strong desire to leave Palau and move to a third country.
They were transferred to Koror, the capital of the tropical island group, from the US prison in November but there is no Uighur community in Palau and the men — some of whom have married — are keen to move to Australia.
They spent more than seven years in detention after a group of 22 Uighurs was captured in Afghanistan in the US invasion of 2001 following the attacks on the World Trade Center in New York and the Pentagon.
Although cleared of any wrongdoing in 2005, the Uighurs was not returned to China because of fears they would be persecuted by Chinese authorities, and the US has struggled to find countries which would take them.
One of the men, Edham Mamet, recently married a Uighur woman who had been living with her two children in Australia, where her previous husband drowned.
Another, Abdul Ghappar Abdul Rahman, last week married a Uighur woman who travelled to Palau for the wedding.
Mamet has already prepared an application to move to Australia, and the other five are also keen to move there.
Toribiong said that aside from Mamet, Dawut Abdurehim and Anwar Hassan filed their applications to the Australian Embassy in Pohnpei .
Toribiong has supported their bid and has asked the Australian government to take the six men.
The six men are among 17 Uighurs from Guantanamo who were resettled in places as diverse as Albania, Switzerland, and Bermuda, as well as Palau.
The five Uighur men who remain in Guantanamo have rejected offers of resettlement in Palau, and are taking court action to be allowed to settle in the US.
