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Row brews over Papua refugeesIndonesia blasts Australia granting visas for asylumBy Grant Holloway  The Papuan asylum seekers, seen here in January after arriving in Australia. RELATED
YOUR E-MAIL ALERTSSYDNEY, Australia (CNN) -- Australia's government is hoping to avoid escalating a diplomatic spat between Canberra and Jakarta over the granting of temporary visas to asylum seekers from the Indonesian province of Papua. The Indonesian government has criticized Australia's decision to grant the 42 visas to the Papuans, especially as President Susilo Bambang Yudhoyono had personally asked Prime Minister John Howard to intervene. In a statement released late Thursday, Indonesia's Ministry of Foreign Affairs described the decision as "counterproductive" and said it "does not account for the sensitivity of Indonesians to this issue". Australia's Immigration Department on Thursday granted the visas to the group of Papuans who had arrived on the nation's northeastern coast in January claiming asylum from what they described as a campaign of "genocide" by Indonesia's military in their homeland. Jakarta maintains the group are merely economic migrants fleeing to Australia for a better life. The Foreign Ministry said Australia's decision was also "unhelpful to Indonesia's serious and sincere efforts to find a solution to the problems in Papua through dialogue," the official Antara news agency reported. "The decision justifies speculation that there are elements in Australia that support the separatist movement in Papua ..." The province of Papua, also known as Irian Jaya or West Papua, is the western half of the island of New Guinea which lies directly to the north of Australia. It has a population of around 800,000 and is off-limits to foreign journalists and diplomats. The eastern part of the island forms Papua New Guinea. Wracked by poverty but also the source of considerable mineral wealth, the province is the home of a burgeoning independence movement. Rights groups there claim as many as 100,000 people have been killed as a result of separatist violence since the early 1970s. Australian Foreign Minister Alexander Downer on Friday downplayed the diplomatic tension, saying he hoped Jakarta understood Canberra's position on the issue. "This isn't a decision that's made by the Australian government, but through a process which is set in Australian law," Downer told Australian Broadcasting Corporation radio. "We're certainly not changing our position on the recognition of West Papua as part of the Republic of Indonesia," he said. Downer added that he believed President Yudhoyono was making "a very substantial effort" to ensure human rights were maintained in the province and that he was working towards an "appropriate political settlement there". The sometimes rocky relationship between Australia and Indonesia has been steadily improving since hitting a nadir in 1999 when Australia led an international peacekeeping task force into the then Indonesian territory of East Timor. Cooperation between the two nations has been spurred by joint security efforts to fight regional terrorism in the wake of the 2002 Bali bombings and subsequent attacks in Jakarta, including the bombing of the Australian embassy in Jakarta. Australia also responded generously in the aftermath of the 2004 tsunami which devastated Indonesia's Aceh province, committing over A$1 billion ($710 million) in aid. 
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