Fed: Diplomacy coming too late on Tampa - Beazley

AAP General News (Australia)
08-31-2001
Fed: Diplomacy coming too late on Tampa - Beazley

Opposition Leader KIM BEAZLEY says efforts to seek an international solution to the
Tampa stand-off should have been started at the outset of the drama.

He welcomes Prime Minister JOHN HOWARD talking to United Nations secretary-general
KOFI ANNAN and others to try and get a diplomatic solution to the problem

Mr BEAZLEY told reporters the prime minister is doing at the end of the week what he
should have been doing at the beginning of the week.

He says politicians in other countries have now been allowed to harden their attitudes.

And he says it's premature to be talking about dividing the refugees and sending them
to destinations such as New Zealand.





Some 460 mostly Afghan asylum seekers, many of them women and children, are stranded
aboard the freighter Tampa, which rescued them from a sinking Indonesian boat in the Indian
Ocean on Sunday.

AAP RTV dep/daw/pc

KEYWORD: BOAT BEAZLEY (CANBERRA)

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