Jakarta to deport Sri Lankans if asked to take them

JAKARTA, Mar 2 (Reuters) Jakarta would deport a group of 83 Sri Lankan asylum seekers to their home country if Australia asks to send them to Indonesia while assessing their refugee claims, a government spokesman said today.

The Australian navy intercepted a refugee boat from Indonesia a week ago, with the 83 Sri Lankans and two Indonesians aboard, near Australia's Indian Ocean territory of Christmas Island, where they have been taken for interviews.

Australian Immigration Minister Kevin Andrews has said Canberra is looking at sending the asylum seekers back to a refugee camp in Indonesia, but only if Jakarta guarantees they will not be sent home while their refugee claims are assessed.

However, Indonesian foreign affairs spokesman Desra Percaya told reporters that, while Jakarta would receive the asylum seekers, it would only see it as a transit before ''sending them back to the country of origin''.

''We don't have any obligation ... to process them in Indonesia.

Secondly, we don't have a tradition to grant asylum to anyone.'' Sri Lanka's top diplomat in Jakarta said that, if the asylum seekers were sent to Indonesia, he wanted Indonesia only to be a transit point and he would help repatriate the 83 men back home, where they would not be subject to persecution.

Andrews has said that, if Indonesia refused Canberra's request, the option would not be pursued.

The Sydney Morning Herald newspaper said last Saturday that a secret deal was being struck with Jakarta to send the asylum seekers back to Sri Lanka via Indonesia.

The latest boat is the first major arrival of asylum seekers in Australia since 43 Papuans landed in the remote north in an outrigger canoe in January 2006, prompting a diplomatic rift with Indonesia when Canberra granted them protection visas.

Under Australia's ''Pacific Solution'' introduced in 2001, people intercepted attempting to reach the Australian mainland in refugee boats are sent to offshore immigration detention camps in Nauru and Papua New Guinea while their claims are assessed.

Refugee advocates say the ''Pacific Solution'' denies asylum seekers their rights under international law, and say the latest arrivals should be allowed into Australia while their protection claims are assessed.

REUTERS SP KP1457