SYDNEY (Reuters) - Australian Foreign Minister Julie Bishop said on Saturday that a controversial refugee resettlement deal with the United States would go ahead, despite U.S. immigration officials postponing interviews with asylum seekers.

An undated handout image supplied by Amnesty International claiming to show the view of inside the living quarters at the country's Australian-run detention centre on the Pacific island nation of Nauru. Amnesty International/Handout via REUTERS

Reuters reported on Friday that U.S. officials had pulled planned second-round interviews with detainees in an Australian camp on the Pacific island of Nauru, suggesting Washington is already blocking progress on a controversial refugee resettlement deal.

Detainees and an official source said interview dates were pulled on Saturday, hours after U.S. President Donald Trump signed an executive order that suspended the U.S. refugee program for 120 days and stopped visits by travelers from seven Muslim-majority countries.

Bishop said both countries were still working through the details of the agreement, which sparked a rare diplomatic spat between the two staunch allies, with Trump berating Australia’s prime minister in an angry phone call.

“The agreement is to be honored by the Trump administration (so) I’m pleased this agreement will continue,” Bishop told reporters in Western Australia.

“We remain in contact with the Trump administration and our embassy in Washington is also working with U.S. officials and we expect that vetting process would be as tough as Australia’s vetting process in terms of health and security checks,” she added.

Bishop said “my understanding is that interviewing and vetting is still taking place”, without providing any further details.

Several detainees on Nauru showed Reuters the canceled interview dates in their online applications, while a source said the second-round interviews had been postponed while officials tried to work out what was meant by the “extreme vetting” announced by the White House.

Under the refugee swap deal, agreed in the final months of Barack Obama’s presidency late last year, the United States would take up to 1,250 asylum seekers. In return, Australia would take refugees from El Salvador, Guatemala and Honduras.

Trump has begrudgingly said he planned to stand by the deal, but described it on Twitter as “dumb”.

The White House has yet to determine and make public what an extreme vetting process would entail, but detainees and their advocates are concerned it would effectively rule out all the eligible detainees.

Thousands of protesters rallied across Australia on Saturday condemning Trump’s executive order and demanding an end to Australia’s offshore detention of asylum seekers.

A U.S. federal judge on Friday put a nationwide block on Trump’s order, although his administration could still have the policy put back into effect on appeal. </s> The foreign affairs minister, Julie Bishop, has denied reports that the US has delayed interviews with detainees on Nauru, amid lingering uncertainty over whether America will honour a refugee settlement deal.

Detainees applying to settle in America under the deal had reportedly had their planned second-round interview dates with US officials postponed indefinitely, Reuters reported. But Bishop told reporters while on the election trail in Western Australia on Saturday that she understood interviewing and vetting was still taking place.

“The agreement is to be honoured by the Trump administration [so] I’m pleased this agreement will continue,” she told the ABC.

Confusion around exactly what the US president, Donald Trump, meant in saying the refugees would be subject to “extreme vetting” was the reason behind postponing the interviews, according to an unnamed source in the Reuters report. Trump described the refugee agreement as a “dumb deal” in a tweet.

Under the settlement deal, the US will take refugees currently held on Manus Island and Nauru in return for Australia accepting refugees from Central America.

The immigration minister, Peter Dutton, earlier said authorities were working to get refugees off Manus Island and Nauru as quickly as possible but it was a “difficult juggling act”.

“We are keen to get people off there as quickly as possible ... we’ve got unfinished business,” he told 2GB radio on Friday. “There’s a long way to go before we can get people off.”

Australian officials have been working with US counterparts to look at the individual cases of those held in immigration detention, Dutton said.

On Saturday hundreds of protesters rallied in Sydney against Trump’s immigration restrictions and Australia’s offshore detention of asylum seekers.

The crowd just shy of 1000 people marched from Hyde Park to the US embassy at Martin Place, according to organiser Ian Rintoul, as similar rallies were held in Canberra, Hobart and Newcastle.

Rintoul said they protested against Australia’s offshore detention of asylum seekers and its refugee-swap deal with the US, as well as Trump’s executive order blocking travellers from seven countries. The order was on Saturday subject to a temporary restraining order after a ruling from a US federal judge.

Rintoul said protesters wanted refugees in offshore detention at Nauru and Manus Island to be brought to Australia. He said that even if Australia’s refugee-swap agreement with the US did proceed, it wouldn’t provide for all the refugees at Nauru and Manus Island. </s> Australia still plans to honor an agreement to accept refugees from Central America, even in the face of President Trump's high profile hesitation to take a group of refugees off Australian hands.

"Australia will participate in a multilateral program to resettle refugees from Central America," Nicole Chant, a spokeswoman for the Australian ministry of Immigration and Border Protection, told the Washington Examiner in an emailed statement. "It's expected that Australia will be referred a small number of people for resettlement and they will be resettled within the existing Humanitarian Program."

Australian Prime Minister Malcolm Turnbull agreed in September to resettle Central American refugees who were living in a Costa Rican camp, supported by the United States. Soon after, then-Secretary of State John Kerry announced that the United States would accept about 1,200 Middle Eastern refugees who had fled to Australia.

The deal led Turnbull's opponents to accuse him of planning a "people swap" with the Obama administration, but Turnbull denied any quid pro quo arrangement.

"We are encouraging all countries to work with [the UN refugee agency], as we are going to on this subject that you've just asked about, to find a durable solution for these refugees," Kerry told reporters at the time. "And that was a key focus of the leaders' summit that took place in New York in September, and my sense is that we're reaching an understanding of how we may be able to deal with it."

The agreement also frustrated congressional Republicans, who protested that President Obama had classified the terms of the deal for no good reason. "[C]lassification of an agreement regarding individuals to be considered for admission by the U.S. Refugee Admissions Program is unprecedented," Senate Judiciary Committee Chairman Chuck Grassley, R-Iowa, and House Judiciary Committee Chairman Bob Goodlatte, R-Va., wrote in a letter to the State Department and the Department of Homeland Security in December.

Trump famously complained about the deal in a phone call last week with Turnbull, saying that following through on the agreement would expose the United States to the "next Boston bombers." Trump also said that he would "get killed" politically for accepting the refugees, according to a leaked transcript published by the Washington Post. "This is the worst deal ever," he said.

Kerry's statement seemed to imply that the American and Australian refugee agreements were developed at the same summit. Turnbull's government avoided any hints of backing out of their deal, although they have not yet processed the Central American refugees.

"People are yet to be referred for resettlement in third countries, including Australia, under the arrangement," Chant said.

Rep. Ted Yoho, R-Fla., who chairs the House Foreign Affairs subcommittee on the Asia-Pacific region, said he hasn't heard any threats that Australia would reject the Central American refugees. He predicted that Trump would subject the refugees that Kerry promised to take to 'strict vetting" procedures and ultimately allow them into the country.

"I think it's important," Yoho told the Washington Examiner . </s> Foreign Minister Julie Bishop says US officials are continuing to interview asylum seekers in Nauru as part of the refugee deal with America, despite lingering uncertainty over the agreement.

Reuters has reported interviews on Nauru had been suspended because US officials were uncertain about what security checks were going to be imposed on refugees under the agreement.

But Ms Bishop denied there had been a pause.

"The agreement is to be honoured by the Trump administration [so] I'm pleased this agreement will continue."

A US Government source also told the ABC officials were pushing ahead with implementing the deal.

But US President Donald Trump's executive order cracking down on refugees has caused uncertainty and slowed down the approvals process.

Mr Trump also publicly denounced the deal and labelled it "dumb" after clashing with Prime Minister Malcolm Turnbull on the issue.

Still, the Coalition was convinced Mr Trump's furious denunciations of the agreement were aimed at a domestic audience, and that he would not abandon it completely.

White House spokesman Sean Spicer again fielded questions about the deal during his daily briefing, and said the Trump administration would honour the agreement "in some way".

"We are going to continue to work through this. We are going to honour these commitments in some way, meaning we are going to vet these people in accordance with the agreement that happened," Mr Spicer said.

The White House had previously said any refugees accepted would be subjected to "extreme vetting" before being allowed into the United States.

But officials in both Australia and the US were uncertain about exactly what "extreme vetting" meant and unsure about exactly what additional security checks would be required.

US vetting process expected to be 'tough'

The Foreign Minister said both countries were still working through the details of the agreement.

"We remain in contact with the Trump administration and our embassy in Washington is also working with US officials and we expect that vetting process would be as tough as Australia's vetting process in terms of health and security checks," Ms Bishop said.

Refugee advocates said the persistent uncertainty over the deal was causing enormous anxiety on Manus Island and Nauru — and is doing further psychological damage to refugees on both islands.

Opposition Leader Bill Shorten criticised the Government's handling of the deal, but today said Labor would back the Government "100 per cent" as it worked to get refugees to the US.

"I am completely supportive of the Government's efforts to see the refugee deal honoured with the United States," he said.

"I take what the Prime Minister said, that the deal will be honoured — Labor supports this full stop." </s> CANBERRA, Australia — The United States has agreed to resettle an unspecified number of refugees languishing in Pacific island camps in a deal that is expected to inspire more asylum seekers to attempt to reach Australia by boat, officials said on Sunday.

Prime Minister Malcolm Turnbull would not say whether he had discussed the deal with President-elect Donald Trump during their telephone conversation on Thursday. The Obama administration had agreed to resettle refugees among almost 1,300 asylum seekers held at Australia's expense on the island nations of Nauru and Papua New Guinea.

"We deal with one administration at a time and there is only one president of the United States at a time," Turnbull told reporters, adding that the deal was reached "some time ago."

Trump has called for a moratorium or tight restrictions on Muslim immigration. Most of the asylum seekers are Muslims from the Middle East, Africa and Asia.

Australia refuses to resettle any refugee who has arrived by boat since the date the tough policy was announced on July 19, 2013.

Australia pays Nauru and Papua New Guinea to house boat arrivals and has been searching for countries that will resettle them.

Few refugees have accepted offers to resettle in Papua New Guinea and Cambodia because most hope that Australia will eventually take them in.

Turnbull said the United States had only agreed to resettle refugees already on Nauru and Papua New Guinea. Refugees who arrive in the future would not be sent to the United States.

"We anticipate that people smugglers will seek to use this agreement as a marketing opportunity to tempt vulnerable people onto these perilous sea journeys," Turnbull said.

"We have put in place the largest and most capable maritime surveillance and response fleet Australia has ever deployed," he added.

Australian Border Force Commissioner Roman Quaedvlieg said ships had been positioned to turn boats back to Indonesia if asylum seekers attempt to reach Australia in the hope of being sent to the U.S.

No people smuggling operation has successfully delivered asylum seekers to Australia by boat since July 2014, but 29 boats have been turned back to Indonesia by the Australian navy.

Turnbull announced at Obama's Leaders' Summit on Refugees in September that Australia would participate in the U.S.-led program to resettle Central American refugees from a camp in Costa Rica. Australia would also increase its refugee intake by 5,000 to 18,750 a year.

Turnbull said at the time that the agreement to resettle Hondurans and El Salvadoreans was "not linked to any other resettlement discussions" involving Australia's refugees getting to the U.S. </s> Sydney, Australia-Refugees held on remote Pacific camps after trying to reach Australia by boat will be resettled in the US in a "one-off" deal, the premier says, a breakthrough that could see the controversial facilities closed.

Canberra sends asylum-seekers who try to reach Australia by boat to detention facilities on Papua New Guinea's Manus Island and Nauru. They are blocked from resettling in Australia even if found to be refugees.

"The arrangements with the United States will offer the opportunity for refugees, both on Nauru and Manus, to be resettled," Prime Minister Malcolm Turnbull told reporters in Canberra.

"It is a one-off agreement. It will not be repeated... Our priority is the resettlement of women, children and families."

Successive Australian governments have sought to stem waves of boat migration by people from war-torn Afghanistan, Sri Lanka and the Middle East, using harsh policies including turning back the vessels, and strict secrecy about operations on the high seas and at the remote camps.

Although the latest policies by the current conservative government largely stopped the arrivals, conditions in the camps have been widely criticised by refugee advocates and medical professionals.

They say some asylum-seekers suffer from mental health problems due to their prolonged, indefinite detention.

The UNHCR said the arrangement was a "much-needed, long-term solution" but warned that options should be found for everyone on Manus and Nauru.

"This announcement is full of holes. No timeframe. No numbers," added Daniel Webb from the Human Rights Law Centre, which has challenged offshore detention in court.

"This ugly chapter in our history only closes when every single man, woman and child suffering at our government's hand on Nauru and Manus is finally rebuilding their lives in safety. No one can be left behind."

The arrangement followed Turnbull's announcement in September that Australia would join a US-led programme to resettle Central American refugees at a Costa Rica centre.

Turnbull said officials from the US Department of Homeland Security would be arriving in Australia "in the next few days".

But he could not say how many refugees would be offered US resettlement and if the agreement would continue under the incoming Donald Trump administration.

President-elect Trump said on the campaign trail that he would tighten immigration, particularly for Muslims.

US Secretary of State John Kerry, who is in New Zealand, confirmed the deal, adding that "we in the United States have agreed to consider referrals from (UN refugee body) UNHCR on refugees now residing in Nauru and in Papua New Guinea".

Immigration Minister Peter Dutton said asylum-seekers whose refugee applications are rejected would be expected to return home.

Refugees who are offered the US move but reject it would be offered a 20-year Nauru visa, while any future boat arrivals will not be eligible for the deal.

Dutton stressed the deal was not an incentive for people-smugglers to send more asylum-seekers by boat, with Canberra set to ramp up its marine border patrols to turn back vessels. </s> CANBERRA, Australia -- Australia says the United States has agreed to resettle an unspecified number of asylum seekers being held on the Pacific islands of Papua New Guinea and Nauru.

The agreement is a one-off that will be available only to the 1,300 people currently in processing centers and to the 370 who went to Australia for medical treatment, Prime Minister Malcolm Turnbull said in Canberra on Sunday. The priority will be the resettlement of women, children and families, and it would exclude those deemed to be economic refugees, he said.

U.S. Secretary of State John Kerry confirmed that the United States had "agreed to consider referrals" from the United Nations refugee agency on Australia's refugees.

"We are going to work to protect vulnerable refugees around the world, and we'll share that responsibility with our friends in the regions that are most affected by this challenge," Kerry told reporters in New Zealand.

The resettlement deal was struck with the administration of President Barack Obama, Turnbull said, adding that he did not tell President-elect Donald Trump that the United States had agreed to the deal. Turnbull and Trump spoke by phone on Thursday.

"We deal with one administration at a time, and you don't discuss confidential matters with one administration with a future administration," Turnbull told Nine Network television.

Turnbull could not say whether the refugees would be resettled before the Trump administration takes over on Jan. 20. U.S. Department of Homeland Security officials are expected in Australia this week to begin assessing migrants and refugees, including health and security checks, to decide who will be resettled.

The Australian prime minister also refused to speculate on how Trump's election victory might affect the deal. Most of the asylum seekers are Muslims from the Middle East, Africa and Asia, and Trump has called for a moratorium or tight restrictions on Muslim immigration.

Turnbull said negotiations began with a conversation he had with Obama in January.

Turnbull's Liberal-National coalition won power in 2013 vowing to stop a surge of refugees, some of whom drowned attempting to arrive in Australia by sea, often ferried in rickety boats by people-smugglers from Indonesia.

Australia takes in migrants and refugees each year, but it has refused to resettle any refugee who has arrived by boat since its new policy was announced on July 19, 2013. It pays Nauru and Papua New Guinea to house boat arrivals and has been searching for countries that will resettle them, but few asylum seekers have accepted offers to resettle in Papua New Guinea or Cambodia because most hope that Australia will eventually take them in.

While the policy of sending asylum seekers to the Pacific islands has halted the flow of migrants and cut the number of people drowning at sea, it has been condemned by the United Nations for breaching human rights.

In an effort to deter boat arrivals resuming, Turnbull said resettlement will not be offered to any future asylum seekers. Any refugee who refuses to go to the United States would be given a 20-year visa to stay on Nauru, an 8-square-mile atoll with a population of 10,000 people, Immigration Minister Peter Dutton said.

The government will also deploy the largest maritime surveillance and response effort in peacetime to intercept and turn back boats, Turnbull said at a media conference in Sydney early today.

"We anticipate that people smugglers will seek to use this agreement as a marketing opportunity to tempt vulnerable people onto these perilous sea journeys," Turnbull said, insisting that Australia's border protection policy has not changed.

"We need to send the clearest and most unequivocal message to people smugglers and their would-be passengers that if they seek to come to Australia unlawfully, they will not succeed," he said.

Turnbull announced at Obama's Leaders' Summit on Refugees in September that Australia would participate in the U.S.-led program to resettle Central American migrants from a camp in Costa Rica. Australia would also increase its intake of other migrants and refugees by 5,000 to 18,750 a year.

Turnbull said at the time that the agreement to resettle Hondurans and Salvadorans was "not linked to any other resettlement discussions" involving Australia's refugees getting to the United States.

Refugee Action Coalition spokesman Ian Rintoul said some refugees on Nauru were "hopeful" of resettlement in the United States, but were frustrated by the lack of details. There seemed no short-term hope for asylum seekers on Papua New Guinea's Manus Island, a male-only camp holding 873 men.

"There are some people who, if the United States is offered to them, certainly they will take it," Rintoul said, adding that several would prefer Australia where they have family.

Papua New Guinea said it will close the Manus Island processing center in April after the nation's Supreme Court ruled detaining the refugees was unconstitutional.

"This is a critically important step" to enabling the camp to be closed, Turnbull told Channel Nine television on Monday.

The agreement was welcomed by the U.N. High Commissioner for Refugees.

"The approach taken by Australia in transferring refugees and asylum-seekers to open-ended detention in Papua New Guinea and Nauru has caused immense harm to vulnerable people who have sought asylum since 2013," the agency said in a statement on Sunday, saying the deal "reflects a much-needed, long-term solution."

Information for this article was contributed by Peter Vercoe of Bloomberg News; and by Rod McGuirk and Nick Perry of The Associated Press. </s> SYDNEY (Reuters) - U.S. immigration officials have postponed interviews with asylum seekers in an Australian camp on the Pacific island of Nauru since President Trump's executive order on immigration, suggesting Washington is already blocking progress on a controversial refugee resettlement deal.

The deal sparked a rare diplomatic spat between the two staunch allies, with Trump berating Australia's prime minister in an angry phone call that led to quick moves in Washington to reaffirm the strength of the relationship.

Asylum seekers on Nauru who are applying to settle in the United States under the refugee swap deal, agreed in the final months of Barack Obama's presidency late last year, told Reuters that planned second-round interview dates with visiting U.S. officials had been postponed indefinitely.

Under the deal, the United States would take up to 1,250 asylum seekers. In return, Australia would take refugees from El Salvador, Guatemala and Honduras.

More than a dozen asylum seekers on both Nauru and Manus Island in Papua New Guinea, site of another Australian offshore detention camp, told Reuters they were afraid for their future since Trump said "extreme vetting" would be used and after his testy phone call with Australian Prime Minister Malcolm Turnbull.

"We are deeply concerned about the U.S. deal," Imran Mohammad, 22, a stateless man from the Rohingya ethnic minority in Myanmar, told Reuters by telephone from Manus Island.

"We don't know what to believe and the uncertainty is getting worse and worse," he said. "It is killing us inside every day."

There are around 1,200 refugees, mostly single men, being held at Australian processing camps on Manus Island and Nauru in conditions that have been harshly criticized by the United Nations and human rights agencies.

The Australian government, which maintains a strict policy of not allowing anyone who tries to reach the country by boat to settle here, has never detailed the nationalities of the detainees but refugee advocates say most are from Iran, Iraq, Afghanistan, Pakistan, Somalia and Sudan.

Trump's executive order last week suspended the U.S. refugee program for 120 days and stopped visits by travelers from seven Muslim-majority countries Iran, Iraq, Libya, Somalia, Sudan, Syria, and Yemen for 90 days.

Trump has begrudgingly said he planned to stand by the deal, but described it on Twitter as "dumb". Also on Thursday, Senate Judiciary Committee Chairman Chuck Grassley called on Trump's administration to make the details of the deal public, noting it was made without Congressional approval.

An official source with knowledge of the process said confusion around exactly what "extreme vetting" would mean was the reason asylum seeker interviews by officials from U.S. Citizenship and Immigration Services (CIS) were postponed.

"The CIS team stage has been postponed as they seek clarification on what information is needed under extreme vetting," the source, who spoke on condition of anonymity because she was not authorized to speak to the media, told Reuters.

"The feeling is that they didn’t want to conduct the interviews and then find out they needed to do the process again," she said.

The U.S. State Department did not respond immediately to requests for comment on the postponed interviews, which had been scheduled between Friday and Feb. 21, or whether the U.S. team would travel to Manus island as expected later this month.

The White House is yet to determine and make public what an extreme vetting process would entail, but detainees and their advocates are concerned it would effectively rule out all the eligible detainees.

It has proved almost impossible to determine what Trump means by extreme vetting.

Some refugee advocates fear it will entail medical background checks as well as strict security assessments. They say many of the internees suffer mental illnesses after spending years in the camps. Harsh conditions and reports of systemic child abuse in the camps have drawn wide criticism.

Negar, a 22-year-old from Iran who has been on Nauru for four years, said her first interview for U.S. resettlement on Jan. 24 lasted seven hours.

She was asked about her background, including where her family is now, the reason she fled from Iran, and who financed her trip to Christmas Island, a remote Australian island off the continent's northwest that is targeted by many asylum seekers who make the perilous sea journey from Indonesia after paying people smugglers there.

She was also asked whether she had links with any political groups in Iran.

Detainees said interview dates on their applications were removed on Saturday, hours after Trump signed his executive order.

They said they were given no formal explanation. Most of those who spoke to Reuters asked for their names to be withheld, fearing they could jeopardize their future by speaking publicly.

"We are back in limbo, and I am afraid if after four months they make up another thing to keep us here longer," said an Iranian woman with a small child.

"They just play with us, I wish we were dead in the ocean once instead of dying slowly, here in the exile," she said.

Behrouz Boochani, a Kurdish Iranian man who has been held on Manus Island for nearly four years, said there was some small consolation from Trump's "dumb deal" tweet.

"Since the day this deal was announced, we have been living with uncertainty over whether it will happen," he said. "Trump's twitter helps us in some ways as we know it will not happen." </s> CANBERRA, Australia (AP) — The United States has agreed to resettle an unspecified number of refugees languishing in Pacific island camps in a deal that is expected to inspire more asylum seekers to attempt to reach Australia by boat, officials said on Sunday.

Prime Minister Malcolm Turnbull would not say whether he had discussed the deal with President-elect Donald Trump during their telephone conversation on Thursday. The Obama administration had agreed to resettle refugees among almost 1,300 asylum seekers held at Australia’s expense on the island nations of Nauru and Papua New Guinea. Another 370 who came to Australia for medical treatment then refused to return to the islands would also be eligible.

“We deal with one administration at a time and there is only one president of the United States at a time,” Turnbull told reporters.

Trump has called for a moratorium or tight restrictions on Muslim immigration. Most of the asylum seekers are Muslims from the Middle East, Africa and Asia.

U.S. Secretary of State John Kerry confirmed that the United States had “agreed to consider referrals” from the United Nations refugee agency on Australia’s refugees.

“We are going to work to protect vulnerable refugees around the world, and we’ll share that responsibility with our friends in the regions that are most affected by this challenge,” Kerry told reporters in New Zealand.

Australia refuses to resettle any refugee who has arrived by boat since the date the tough policy was announced on July 19, 2013.

Australia pays Nauru and Papua New Guinea to house boat arrivals and has been searching for countries that will resettle them.

Few refugees have accepted offers to resettle in Papua New Guinea and Cambodia because most hope that Australia will eventually take them in.

Any refugee who refuses to go to the U.S. would be given a 20-year visa to stay on Nauru, a tiny impoverished atoll with a population of 10,000 people, Immigration Minister Peter Dutton said.

U.S. Department of Homeland Security officials are expected in Australia this week to begin assessing refugees.

Turnbull would not say how many refugees the United States might take, but said the most vulnerable would be given priority.

“Our priority is the resettlement of woman, children and families,” Turnbull said. “This will be an orderly process. It will take time. It will not be rushed.”

Refugees who arrive in the future would not be sent to the United States, he said.

“We anticipate that people smugglers will seek to use this agreement as a marketing opportunity to tempt vulnerable people onto these perilous sea journeys,” Turnbull said. “We have put in place the largest and most capable maritime surveillance and response fleet Australia has ever deployed.”

Australian Border Force Commissioner Roman Quaedvlieg said ships had been positioned to turn boats back to Indonesia if asylum seekers attempt to reach Australia in the hope of being sent to the U.S.

No people smuggling operation has successfully delivered asylum seekers to Australia by boat since July 2014.

Turnbull announced at Obama’s Leaders’ Summit on Refugees in September that Australia would participate in the U.S.-led program to resettle Central American refugees from a camp in Costa Rica. Australia would also increase its refugee intake by 5,000 to 18,750 a year.

Turnbull said at the time that the agreement to resettle Hondurans and El Salvadoreans was “not linked to any other resettlement discussions” involving Australia’s refugees getting to the U.S.

Refugee Action Coalition spokesman Ian Rintoul said some refugees on Nauru were “hopeful” of resettlement in the United States, but were frustrated by the lack of detail. There seemed no short-term hope for asylum seekers on Papua New Guinea’s Manus Island, a male-only camp holding 873 men.

“There are some people who if the United States is offered to them, certainly they will take it,” Rintoul said, adding that several would prefer Australia where they had family.

Rights groups have been scathing about conditions on the island immigration camps. Two asylum seekers set themselves on fire on Nauru this year and two local men have been convicted of murdering an Iranian asylum seeker during a 2004 riot at the Manus Island camp.

Associated Press writer Nick Perry in Wellington, New Zealand, contributed to this report.
Australian Foreign Minister Julie Bishop says Australia will honor the agreement to accept refugees from Central America even though the U.S. has postponed interviews with asylum seekers in a camp at the Pacific island of Nauru.