CANBERRA, April 23 (Reuters) - Australia is bracing for a refugee influx from Sri Lanka as the conflict there enters its final stages, Foreign Minister Stephen Smith said after a boat carrying 32 asylum seekers was intercepted off Australia. Smith, a strong critic of the Sri Lankan government's latest offensive to crush Tamil Tiger rebels, said there was a significant risk that civilians fleeing the war would head for Australia as the long-running conflict drew nearer to an end. "There is clearly very grave potential for displaced people coming from Sri Lanka," Smith told reporters in Perth late on Wednesday. The latest boat was intercepted off Australia's northwest coast on Wednesday, adding further pressure on the centre-left government's new asylum policy, which has been criticised for being too soft. Immigration advocates said the number of asylum-seekers worldwide had increased by 12 percent during 2008, and Australia was seeing only a fraction of that, with numbers last year up from 3,970 in 2007 to 4,750. The government has previously said violence in Afghanistan and Sri Lanka is fuelling people smuggling operations in Asia, and authorities have reported a steep increase in arrivals of asylum seekers in recent months. Asylum policy is a divisive area that cleaves Australians between voters supporting a humanitarian approach and others wanting a tougher border security. The centre-left government, which faces re-election next year, softened immigration policy last July. Since then 14 boats carrying more than 400 asylum seekers, mostly from Afghanistan, Iraq and Sri Lanka, have reached Australia's waters. The border protection service said 162 asylum seekers arrived by boat in 2008 and 148 in 2007. So far in 2009, there have been seven boat arrivals, carrying more than 200 people in total. Prime Minister Kevin Rudd's government has been defending its asylum policy for the past week, with critics saying last year's abolition of mandatory detention was encouraging more arrivals. (Reporting by Rob Taylor; Editing by )
Military spokesman Brigadier Udaya Nanayakkara (2nd L) points to a diagram that he says shows the progress of the Sri Lankan army against the Liberation Tigers of Tamil Eelam (LTTE) during ...
