Trade Minister Simon Crean has emphatically denied Australia has approached the Indonesian government to hold off executing three Australian drug couriers in an election year.
Mr Crean was playing down a report that Australian embassy officials in Jakarta have told Indonesian authorities that the possible executions of the Australians is a highly sensitive issue for the Rudd government.
"It's not true," Mr Crean told ABC radio on Thursday.
"We would never tie the circumstances of people potentially facing death row or of consular cases or of people in trouble, we would never tie that to an election cycle."
Scott Rush, Andrew Chan and Myuran Sukumaran are members of the so-called Bali Nine who were arrested at Denpasar airport in 2005 trying to smuggle more than eight kilograms of heroin back to Australia.
Mr Crean said the three men's appeals have not been lodged and the Australian government would wait for that process to be expired before making any representations to Indonesia on their behalf.
He did not deny that consular officers had spoken to Indonesian authorities but described it as "a courtesy call".
"To make the suggestion that we're saying `Don't do anything to these people until after the election is over' is just plain wrong," Mr Crean said.
"This was a courtesy call by a number of lower level officials to an adviser to an incoming attorney-general," Mr Crean said.
"If you are going to make this sort of representation and bring it on strongly, that's not where you would start, and that's not the game we're in."
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