WELLINGTON: New Zealand is to accept 150 refugees a year from
Australia, Prime Minister John Key said Saturday to ease pressure on
Canberra which is grappling with a surge in boatpeople heading to the
region.
Key made the announcement at the end of talks with
visiting Australian Prime Minister Julia Gillard whose government last
year faced a record number of more than 17,000 asylum-seekers arriving
by boat.
"People smuggling has tragic consequences. It is a
regional problem that requires regional cooperation," Key said, adding
Australia had assisted New Zealand in the past.
"There are boats that we can point to that were on their way to New Zealand where Australia has effectively taken those people."
Gillard
warned New Zealand's assistance should not be seen as a message of
encouragement to boatpeople and Australia would continue to rigorously
patrol its waters.
Most of the asylum-seekers pay
people-smugglers for passage from Indonesia on over-crowded, leaky,
vessels, and sinkings are routine.
"Australia expends a lot of
effort in detecting and disrupting people-smuggling ventures and
prosecuting people-smugglers. This is transnational crime and we take a
very rigorous approach," she said.
The 150 boatpeople to be taken
by New Zealand would be people who have been approved as refugees in
one of Australia's offshore processing centres, in the island state of
Nauru or Manus in Papua New Guinea.
Key said they would be part
of the annual quota of 750 refugees New Zealand takes as per its
commitment to the United Nations High Commissioner for Refugees (UNHCR).
"They
will not be in addition to the quota. We are limiting this to 150 in
order to still maintain a significant commitment to resettling refugees
referred by the UNHCR," he said.
New Zealand last took refugees
in a similar manner in 2001 when it resettled 131 of the 438 boatpeople
rescued by the Norwegian freighter Tampa near Christmas Island, an
Australian territory in the Indian Ocean. - AFP
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