Downer to see Lao FM

Sat, 21 Jul 2001, 00:00 WIB | Source: AFP

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.

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