SYDNEY: Australia`s new prime minister Julia Gillard appeared Friday to be backing away from a controversial proposal to process asylum seekers bound for its shores in impoverished East Timor.

Gillard Tuesday launched her bid for a regional processing centre with assurances she had discussed the plan with East Timor`s President Jose Ramos-Horta, who she said had indicated his initial support.
Her remarks were widely interpreted as inferring that the tiny island nation would be the site for such a centre, drawing a hostile response both domestically and in aid-dependent Timor.

Gillard moved late Thursday to shift the debate away from East Timor as opposition mounted, denying she had definitively said the fledgling nation would be home to the centre.

"I’m happy to be judged on what I say, and what I said in the (policy) speech was not that," Gillard told commercial radio.
"I’m not going to leave undisturbed the impression that I made an announcement about a specific location."
The prime minister, who deposed former leader Kevin Rudd in a lightning coup just two weeks ago, said the ultimate destination would be decided through regional negotiation.

"We’re talking about sovereign countries here, and obviously I’m not going to unilaterally announce, on behalf of another nation what’s going to happen in that nation," said Gillard.

She said she would rule out "anywhere that is not a signatory to the (UN) Refugee Convention", and noted that that did not exclude Papua New Guinea or Manus Island, in its north.

Manus was part of the former conservative government`s so-called "Pacific Solution" of locking up and processing boatpeople offshore.
Gillard has denied her tough regional plan is a return to the hardline Pacific Solution, an approach which is being advocated by the conservative opposition as Australia prepares for national elections.

Immigration is a sensitive issue in Australia, where boatloads of refugees arrive after perilous voyages from Asia, often in rickety fishing vessels, as they escape countries such as Afghanistan and Sri Lanka.
Gillard`s insistence that the centre be built in a UN-signatory nation rules out key transit countries Indonesia and Malaysia, as well as Singapore, Thailand, Vietnam, Vanuatu, Tonga and island states in Micronesia.

BDST: 950 HRS, July 9, 2010