Downer to see Lao FM

Downer to see Lao FM

HANOI (AFP): Australian Foreign Minister Alexander Downer is to meet his Lao counterpart Somsavat Lengsavad here next week to press for the release of an Australian couple jailed on widely contested gem theft charges, embassy officials said on Friday.

The meeting will take place on the sidelines of a regional security forum in the Vietnamese capital which Downer is due to attend from Tuesday through Friday, Australian ambassador to Laos Jonathan Thwaites said.

Kay and Kerry Danes were jailed for seven years at a one-day trial last month despite high-level intervention from Canberra including personal appeals by Prime Minister John Howard and a previous meeting between Downer and Somsavat.

Danes, 42, a veteran of Australia's elite Special Air Service Regiment, and his 33-year-old wife Kay were arrested in December amid allegations by Lao officials that they were implicated in the theft of $6.2 million worth of sapphires from Gem Mining Lao (GML), the communist-ruled country's biggest gem mining operation.