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CANBERRA - Prime Minister John Howard has been hit by a wave of outrage after an agreement with the United States to swap asylum seekers detained on Nauru with Cuban refugees interned at Guantanamo Bay.
In what critics have described as a bizarre twist to his controversial "Pacific solution" to deal with boatloads of illegal asylum seekers, Howard's coalition is expected to begin the exchange by sending 82 Sri Lankans and eight Burmese to the US.
Their departure would circumvent a likely row with an increasingly impatient Nauru, which this month said the detainees' claims for refugee status must be settled within six to 12 months - a potential time-bomb for an Australian Government facing election later this year.
The "Pacific solution", imposed to prevent asylum seekers reaching mainland Australia and the protection of refugee laws, has become increasingly unpopular and added to a huge swing in voter sentiment against the Government.
Recent polls have consistently shown that Opposition leader Kevin Rudd is comfortably ahead of Howard as the nation's preferred prime minister, and that Labor has a clear election-winning majority in the two-party preferred vote that decides Australian elections.
The new agreement with Washington was negotiated last week and formalised at a meeting of immigration ministers from Australia, the US, Britain and Canada on Tuesday. It will be reviewed after two years.
Up to 200 people a year could be exchanged under the deal outlined yesterday by Immigration Minister Kevin Andrews.
The Government claims the agreement will deter asylum seekers by denying them access to their desired country. Both Governments will also hope to gain political mileage by ensuring they can meet assurances that illegal asylum seekers will not reach their mainlands.
But critics counter that by providing an "open ticket" to the US - the most preferred global destination - the deal will increase the number of boats heading for Australia.
The country tightened its border controls after the Tampa affair - in which asylum seekers rescued by a Norwegian container ship were turned away from Australian territory - and declared that hundreds of offshore islands were no longer part of the mainland for immigration purposes. Asylum seekers were instead sent to internment camps on Nauru and Papua New Guinea.
The US, facing its own waves of boat people, has special problems with refugees from communist Cuba, both in numbers and in the political sensitivity of the large expatriate Cuban community in Florida. About 150 refugees are at present held at Guantanamo naval base in Cuba, near but not part of the infamous prison housing alleged terrorists.
Howard told ABC radio the agreement would reinforce Australia's message to people smugglers that the nation maintained a tough border protection policy.
"The thing that discourages people from smuggling is the fact that we make it very plain that people will not be allowed to reach the Australian mainland, that they will be processed offshore and that we are not going to have our very generous humanitarian refugee programme distorted by people smugglers."
Labor, although intending to maintain a detention centre on Christmas Island and the migration exclusion zone, has said it will close the Nauru camp. Immigration spokesman Tony Burke said the new agreement would backfire.
"The plan has the very real potential to increase the number of boats coming to Australia. If you're in one of the refugee camps around the world there is no more attractive destination than to think you can get a ticket to the US."
The deal was also criticised by the Refugee Council of Australia as an attempt by the Government to save face over the detainees held on Nauru, and the Asylum Seeker Resource Centre described it as a dark and murky political fix that would fail to deter asylum seekers from trying to reach Australia.
The Democrats said the agreement was a pitiful attempt to appear tough on asylum seekers.
