Indonesia dampens hopes of prison transfer for Corby

CANBERRA - A prisoner transfer agreement between Australia and Indonesia is far from a certainty, a senior Indonesian official says.  

Australia will send a team of negotiators to Indonesia next week to thrash out a deal which could allow Schapelle Corby to serve part of her sentence on home soil.  

The Gold Coast woman has decided to appeal a 20-year jail term for drug smuggling handed down by a Bali court last week.  

If an appeal is unsuccessful, her supporters are pinning their hopes on the transfer deal to bring her home.  

But Indonesian foreign ministry spokesman Marty Natalegawa says such an arrangement is no certainty and nor is a one-off deal to bring Corby home.  

"I must emphasise that agreement ... would be unprecedented from our perspective if we were to have one because we don't have a transfer of sentence agreement with any country whatsoever," he told ABC radio.  

"And even if we were to have one, and that's a big if, even if we were to have one that would be an instrument in general in application and not specifically designed to any one particular legal case by any one particular individual." 

Mr Natalegawa said the Indonesian government had not received a request from the Australians for a one-off interim deal to bring Corby home if the general negotiations became bogged down. 

"If asked ... (our response) would be something along the lines (that) we would rather explore a generic, general type of agreement, rather than something tailor-made for one particular case, especially a case in that is still very much in the legal processes now," he said. 

"It would be prejudging the appeals process." 

- AAP