Australia, Papua New Guinea sign deal to tackle asylum seekers

Australia and Papua New Guinea ( PNG) have signed an agreement that means no asylum seeker arriving by boat will have any chance of settling in Australia, Prime Minister Kevin Rudd and his PNG counterpart Peter O'Neill announced on Friday. Under the agreement, from now on, any asylum seeker who arrives in Australia by boat will have no chance of being settled in Australia as a refugee, they will be sent to Papua New Guinea's Manus Island processing center for assessment of their refugee status. "If they are found to be genuine refugees, they will be resettled in Papua New Guinea," Rudd said, adding that the arrangement would apply for the next 12 months, and be subject to annual review. According to Rudd, the plan was part of a multi-layered approach to dealing with people smuggling, and within the legal framework of the refugee convention. "Critically, the convention requires us not to send genuine refugees back to the countries they have fled from, in this arrangement we honor that undertaking," he said. "The convention requires us to provide proper humane treatment of people. Under this arrangement, we will do so. Asylum seekers who are determined to be genuine refugees will therefore have a country of settlement, namely Papua New Guinea." Rudd added. In exchange for PNG's agreement, Australia will fund further aid initiatives, including redeveloping a major referral hospital in Lae, PNG's second largest city, and assisting with its long- term management. Australia will also deliver half the fund to reform PNG's university sector and in 2014 implement the recommendations of an Australia-PNG education review. Rudd told reporters in Brisbane, the state capital of Queensland, that this was a "very hard-line decision". "I understand the different groups in Australia and around the world will see this decision in different ways," he said. However, he confirmed that Australia's expectation "... is as this regional resettlement arrangement is implemented, and the message is sent loud and clear back up the pipeline, the number of boats will decline over time as asylum seekers then make recourse to other." "The hopes they (people smugglers) offer their customers for the future are nothing but false hopes," he said. In addition, Rudd said Australia also plans to convene an international conference of transit and destination countries to consider how to improve global arrangements for refugees. The conference would consider the adequacy of processing arrangements and how Australia, the U.S., Canada and other countries could deal better with the resettlement issues. Rudd said Australia would also seek to develop more regional arrangements at a similar conference due to be hosted by Indonesia. "We will also be working with regional partners on visa arrangements for certain countries around the world that have become source countries for irregular people movements," he said. Thousands of boat people choose Indonesia as a transit to sneak into neighboring Australia by sea every year. However, many of them were killed on the perilous journey.