Australia claims asylum success

The Australian government says figures showing that no shipload of illegal immigrants has landed on the country's mainland for a full year demonstrate the success of its hardline stance against people-smuggling.

The Immigration Minister, Philip Ruddock, insisted that thousands more would-be refugees would have arrived by now if the government had not moved to deter such action.

The authorities introduced new rules in August 2001 after refusing to allow hundreds of mostly Afghan asylum-seekers rescued by a Norwegian freighter from a sinking ferry off the Indonesian coast to land in Australia.

Australia then adopted a policy of transferring illegal arrivals to the Pacific island states of Nauru and Papua New Guinea to have their asylum claims processed.

Most have since been sent back to Afghanistan.

From the newsroom of the BBC World Service