Malaysia 'To Press On With Australia Refugee Swap'

Malaysia said Friday that it will forge ahead with a controversial refugee swap deal with Australia that has drawn the ire of lawmakers in Canberra and human rights activists.

Home Minister Hishammuddin Hussein insisted the deal was a way to discourage the increased smuggling of people from mainly impoverished and wartorn countries through Malaysia to Australia.

Under the deal, Australia would return 800 newly arrived boat people to Malaysia, where their claims for asylum will be processed. In return, Australia will resettle 4,000 registered refugees from Malaysia over the next four years.

"Australia and Malaysia would like to think outside the box and find a solution, which nobody else has done. For all you know, it may work," Hishammuddin told reporters.

"We may be embarking on something that people might want to adopt 50 years from now... Business cannot be as usual," he added after meeting officials from Australia, the United Nations High Commissioner for Refugees (UNHCR) and the International Organisation for Migration (IOM).

Malaysian government leaders say the country has become a key transit point for smuggling gangs seeking to bring Sri Lankans, Pakistanis and others to Australia.

Hishammuddin said there was no timetable to finalise the deal.

"I have to speak to my counterpart (in Australia)... But I'm confident in the level of trust and political will of both countries," he said.

Human rights activists in both countries have condemned the deal because Malaysia is not a signatory to the United Nations refugee convention and does not legally recognise their status.

Australia has given its assurance the rights of those who are returned would be protected.

But on Friday, the Australian government was facing a High Court challenge with lawyers saying the deal threatened to break up an ethnic Kurdish family who fled Iraq.

The legal moved followed a formal condemnation of the widely criticised plan by Australian lawmakers.

- By Agence France-Presse

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