Papua New Guinea's prime minister has signalled he hopes to see the closure of the immigration detention centre on Manus Island, but he says the timing is up to Australia.
In an interview with SBS World News, Peter O'Neill has suggested very few refugees will ever be resettled in Papua New Guinea, despite the agreement with Australia.
Papua New Guinea is Australia's nearest neighbour, but the two countries have a lot of issues to talk about.
There is aid, trade, law and order and the troubled, Australian-run Manus Island asylum-seeker detention centre.
Addressing the National Press Club in Canberra, PNG prime minister Peter O'Neill says the detention centre has brought nothing but problems to his country.
"Yes, it has done a lot more damage to Papua New Guinea than anything else. Our communities have been accused of many things. We have lived thousands of years peacefully. If you went to Manus, a population of 50 or 60,000 people, you didn't need more than 10 policemen to maintain law and order there."
Mr O'Neill signed a deal with the former Labor government to reopen the Manus Island centre and resettle asylum seekers found to be refugees so they would not come to Australia.
But he now says the centre's days should be numbered.
"At some stage, of course, we need to close the centre. These people cannot remain in Manus forever. We need to make a determination where they should go and take a firm decision on it."
More than 900 people are still in detention on the island.
Half have been found to be refugees, but, so far, only six have settled in the community.
The Prime Minister tells SBS he doubts there will be many more.
"We would love to resettle some of the ... especially some of the skilled workers -- nurses, doctors, engineers -- because we are in need of their skills. And I think it's important that, once they are identified properly, we are happy for them (to settle). But some of them, of course, as you know, don't want to settle in PNG, so you cannot necessarily force them to do so. If there are other options where they can be resettled in an Asian country, if they are of Asian origin, then that's something we need to explore."
Mr O'Neill is frank about his country's other challenges, acknowledging the commodity-price crash has hit his resource-dominated economy hard.
He says the big revenues expected from a new 19-billion-dollar gas project just will not materialise in the short term.
But despite running deficits, despite cash flow and currency problems and International Monetary Fund concerns about debt levels, he says there is still much to be optimistic about.
And he strikes back at criticisms Papua New Guinea has a cash problem.
"I really don't understand where you're getting this information that PNG is broke. I know that there are a few critics out there."
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