Australia picks up 85 Sri Lankan boat people

SYDNEY, Feb 22 (Reuters) - An Australian naval ship today intercepted a boatload of 85 Sri Lankan asylum seekers heading for Australia's remote Christmas Island in the Indian Ocean, Immigration Minister Kevin Andrews said.

Australia's Border Protection Command had been monitoring the boat since a naval aircraft first spotted it on February 19, Andrews said in a statement.

The 85 men were picked up about 50 nautical miles off Christmas Island, which has Australia's main illegal immigrant detention centre.

In the early hours today the Sri Lankans were taken off their boat, which was deemed unseaworthy, and were now undergoing health checks on the Australian naval ship, HMAS Success.

''The passengers identified themselves ... as being Sri Lankan nationals. They indicated their intention to reach Christmas Island,'' Andrews said.

The Sri Lankan government and the Liberation Tigers of Tamil Eelam (LTTE) have been embroiled for months in a new chapter of a separatist war that has killed more than 67,000 people since 1983, and which analysts fear is set to escalate.

''Because of fears for their safety if they remained on the unseaworthy vessel, the group agreed to come aboard the HMAS Success last night,'' Andrews said.

Though a nation built on migrants, Australia has one of the world's strictest policies against illegal arrivals, who are detained in razor-wire camps, often for years.

Australia cracked down on illegal arrivals from 2001 after thousands of illegal immigrants, many who had come through Indonesia after paying people smugglers, targeted its vast coastline and islands in often unseaworthy boats.

The crackdown on boat people helped conservative Prime Minister John Howard win an election in 2001 on a platform of border protection. Since the crackdown Australia has seen few asylum seekers arrive by boat.

In 2005 Australia passed a law which excised thousands of outlying islands from its ''migration zone'', preventing would-be migrants from claiming asylum once they land.

REUTERS SY SSC1323