Nauru receives assurance on detention exit

Nauru President Baron Waqa will tour the Mount Majura Solar Farm and lay a wreath at the War Memorial in Canberra on Friday.

Nauru's president has secured a promise Australia will ease the squeeze on the Pacific island ahead of the immigration detention centre's potential closure and as progress is made on the US refugee resettlement deal.

Nauru President Baron Waqa had bilateral talks with Prime Minister Malcolm Turnbull in Sydney on Thursday as part of a four-day visit to Australia.

Mr Waqa will tour the Mount Majura Solar Farm and lay a wreath at the War Memorial in Canberra on Friday.

Nauru hosts an Australian government-funded asylum seeker immigration detention centre opened in 2012, which in late January was housing 286 men, 49 women and 45 children.

The poverty-stricken Pacific island's economy and employment rates have become heavily dependent on the centre.

The United States has agreed to take an unspecified number of processed and security-checked refugees in limbo on the island.

"The Australian government has made commitments to make sure that we do not suffer a quick change in situation with the (detention centre) because that is definitely going to affect us economically," Mr Waqa told Sky News on Thursday night.


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Source: AAP


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