Australia ends 'Pacific Solution' for asylum seekers

Australia's conservative government further softened its tough asylum seeker policies Friday by ditching the so-called "Pacific Solution" of locking up refugee applicants in remote island detention camps.
The move, which comes four months after Canberra bowed to pressure to release children from detention centres, means an Australia-financed camp on the island nation of Nauru will be mothballed once two remaining detainees have been dealt with.
Prime Minister John Howard defended the Pacific policy, which has cost hundreds of millions of dollars and been criticised by international rights groups, saying it had stopped the flow of illegal immigrants to Australia.
"The Pacific solution has been an outstanding success," he told reporters.
Immigration Minister Amanda Vanstone said the government had reviewed the cases of all 27 asylum seekers on Nauru after receiving fresh information from the United Nations refugee agency (UNHCR) and had decided to bring 25 of them to Australia.
Vanstone said 13 of the Australia-bound asylum seekers had been granted refugee status and 12 would be held in detention until their cases were resolved.
The remaining two asylum seekers had received adverse security assessments and would remain on Nauru until they were deported to their home countries, she said.
More than 1,200 asylum seekers, mainly Iraqis and Afghans, have been detained on Nauru since 2001, with about 700 gaining refugee status and the remainder returning to their native countries.
The policy of detaining asylum seekers on Nauru and another centre on Papua New Guinea's Manus Island - which closed in June last year - was introduced after an influx of boatpeople in late 2001.
Their arrival coincided with a national election that Howard won convincingly by adopting a tough stance on asylum seekers.
Howard said the Nauru and Papua New Guinea facilities would remain mothballed but he hoped they would not need to be used in the future.
The Nauru centre gained international attention when a number of detainees staged a hunger strike in early 2004, with some sewing their lips together in protest at their incarceration.
Earlier this year, UNHCR regional representative Neill Wright expressed concern about the mental health of the Nauru detainees.