PHNOM PENH — Australian Immigration Minister Scott Morrison is to visit Cambodia Friday to sign an agreement on the resettlement of refugees to the Southeast Asian nation, the Cambodian Foreign Ministry said.
A youth stands near a piece of wreckage of a boat which Indonesian police said was carrying migrants to Australia and sank off the Indonesian coast, at Agrabinta beach on the outskirts of Sukabumi, Indonesia's West Java province in this September 28, 2013 file photograph. Australian Immigration Minister Scott Morrison is to visit Cambodia Friday to sign an agreement on the resettlement of refugees to the Southeast Asian nation, the Cambodian Foreign Ministry said Wednesday. (Reuters photo)
Australian officials first made the request to send refugees to Cambodia in March.
"Deputy Prime Minister Sar Kheng ... and the Hon. Scott Morrison will sign a memorandum of understanding ... relating to the resettlement of refugees in Cambodia," said the Foreign Ministry statement issued on Wednesday.
The government in Canberra confirmed that Morrison would go to Cambodia on Friday.
Australian Prime Minister Tony Abbott was elected last September on a promise to stop asylum seekers reaching Australia by boat. His government's measures - including towing asylum-seeker boats back to Indonesia - have all but halted the number of asylum seekers arriving on Australian shores.
Activists have questioned the deal. "Australia has the capacity to look after the refugees themselves," said Denise Coghlan, who heads the Jesuit Refugee Service in Cambodia.
Cambodia is one of the poorest nations in the region, and receives $90 million in aid annually from Australia, one of its biggest donors.