COLLEEN MCEDWARDS, CNN ANCHOR: Well, hundreds of refugees, most of them from Afghanistan, are now on a ship bound for Papua New Guinea. They had been stuck aboard another ship off Australia's remote Christmas Island for the past week. CNN's Tom Mintier now with the latest.</s>TOM MINTIER, CNN CORRESPONDENT: With the precision of a space station docking, the two large ships came together off the coast of Christmas Island. The Norwegian container ship Tampa, with more than 400 would-be asylum-seekers on board, made most of the moves. The Australian navy ship Manoora, a troop-transport vessel, waited for its passengers. It would take nearly six hours to complete the transfer and more than six days to travel to the next destination, Papua New Guinea. The meeting in the Indian Ocean came only after civil rights lawyers agreed to it inside this federal courtroom in Melbourne.</s>JULIAN BURNSIDE, CIVIL LIBERTIES LAWYER: Now, I say your Honor,</s>MINTIER: The agreement comes with a condition: If the government of Australia ends up losing the court case, the military transport ship must turn around and head to Australian waters once again to provide asylum to its passengers. While Papua New Guinea is the halfway point, the ultimate destination will be the island state of Nauru and New Zealand; both locations will become processing centers for the asylum-seekers. The transfer off the shores of Christmas Island ends a weeklong standoff where the government of Australian Prime Minister John Howard refused to allow the boat people to land. During the weeklong voyage, the International Organization for Migration, or IOM, will gather information from the asylum-seekers necessary for processing. Tom Mintier, CNN, Christmas Island.
Tampa and Manoora Make Exchange