Tamils end asylum ship stand-off

By Karishma Vaswani
BBC News, Jakarta

Canberra has said some of the Tamils will be resettled in Australia

A group of 56 Sri Lankan asylum seekers has left an Australian customs ship moored off the coast of Indonesia after more than one month on board.

They are the last of 78 ethnic Tamils who had refused to get off the ship, the Oceanic Viking, unless they were allowed to resettle in Australia.

The Viking rescued them from a sinking boat in Indonesian waters as part of a deal between Jakarta and Canberra.

Their asylum claims will be processed in a detention centre in Indonesia.

That is where they will join the 22 men who left the ship voluntarily last week, after being assured by the Australian authorities that they would be resettled there within a month.

The fate of the remaining 56 asylum seekers is not clear.

They will have to go through the relevant immigration procedures in the Indonesian detention centre.

Embarrassing

Their departure is being hailed as a breakthrough in the month-long impasse.

The stand-off had turned into an embarrassing problem for both Indonesian President Susilo Bambang Yudhoyono and Australian Prime Minister Kevin Rudd.

The two leaders had committed themselves to tackling the problem of asylum seekers together - the deal had been dubbed "the Indonesian solution".

There has been an increase in asylum seekers reaching Australia by sea

In theory, Australia would hand over cash to Indonesia in exchange for Jakarta ensuring that ships with asylum seekers on board bound for Australia were intercepted in Indonesian waters.

But the deal ran into trouble before it even got off the ground, with many in Indonesia saying it was just a way for Australia to outsource its problems.

In recent days, there have been editorials in the Australian press suggesting that Indonesia's president had postponed a trip to Australia until next year because of the way Kevin Rudd had handled the boat saga.

But Indonesian officials say that is not true and that the president has pressing issues to address at home.