Melbourne, March 21 (NNN-BERNAMA) Australia may again call off a ministerial forum with Papua New Guinea (PNG) unless Port Morseby prosecutes those who helped fugitive Australian Julian Moti escape.
Australian Foreign Minister Alexander Downer has used a business forum involving the two countries to issue the warning, the Australian Associated Press news agency said.
Downer said he was "personally hurt, and indeed the Australian Government and people were hurt" that some PNG officials had been involved in helping Moti escape from PNG to the Solomon Islands last October.
Moti was able to flee aboard a clandestine PNG military flight, despite Australia's efforts at the time to extradite him on child sex charges.
"That's not the sort of thing you expect from friends," Downer was quoted as saying at an Australia-PNG Business Council meeting in Cairns on Monday.
Downer said the Australia-PNG ministerial forum -- an annual review of bilateral relations and programs -- could again be called off if PNG does not move to prosecute those involved in Moti's escape.
Canberra has already called the summit off once. It had been due to go ahead in November, but Australia was so incensed at the way in which Moti fled that it pulled the plug.
Australia also cancelled planned visits by PNG Prime Minister Michael Somare and his then Defence Minister Martin Aini, who was sacked last month when he publicly stated that Somare had pressured him into signing documents to disband a PNG Defence Force inquiry into Moti's escape.
Downer said Canberra was keen to see the recommendations from the inquiry. Australia "expected some people to be brought to justice" because PNG's laws were broken, he added.
Somare took over the defence portfolio after he sacked Aini, and has since received the inquiry's final report, AAP said.
Moti's escape also damaged Australia's relations with the Solomon Islands, where Prime Minister Manasseh Sogavare wants Moti, a lawyer, as his attorney-general. Moti's appointment to the post was suspended by the country's Public Service Commission because of the gravity of the Australian charges against him.
Australian police want him to face charges of repeatedly raping a child in Vanuatu in 1997.