Mr BEAZLEY —My question is to the Prime Minister. Prime Minister, now that the mission of the Minister for Foreign Affairs to free Steve Pratt and Peter Wallace has not succeeded, what is the next step you will take to secure their release?

Mr HOWARD (Prime Minister) —I am glad the Leader of the Opposition has asked me this question, and I will endeavour to address it with the seriousness that it deserves. It remains a matter of great regret to me and to the government that, so far, we have not been able to secure the release of these two fine Australians, who were not spies but engaged on humanitarian work inside the former Yugoslavia.

The Leader of the Opposition will be aware from his own experience in government that when a situation like this arises there are a lot of things that are done and said behind the scenes which, if made public, might prejudice the outcome that we seek to achieve. I ask the Leader of the Opposition to accept it from me—and I am very happy to provide him with private briefings, if he so desires—that the government has, ever since these two men were taken into captivity, done everything it could do through the normal overt diplomatic channels, and also many other things through back channels, in order to bring about the release of these two men. You will also be aware of the efforts of the aid organisation CARE International.

I can inform you that the foreign minister went to Belgrade at the weekend at the express invitation of the foreign minister on the understanding and in the belief that the prospects of a meeting with Slobodan Milosevic were very strong. It is apparent from what the foreign minister has told us since the weekend that domestic circumstances inside Yugoslavia conspired to bring about a situation where Milosevic felt that he could no longer see the foreign minister. It ought not to be interpreted from that that the prospects of release in the near future have gone out the window.

But it is also self-evident that the Yugoslav state is in a very precarious condition. It has just emerged from a period of some 70-odd days where it was under the heaviest military bombing which has been embarked upon by any group of countries since World War II. The President of Yugoslavia himself is facing very serious charges in relation to criminal activity.

You will I think understand that the pressures that are operating in this situation are extremely difficult. They are quite intense. Our objective is to get the men out, not to score every rhetorical point. Our objective is not to seek to win debating arguments to secure the release of Mr Pratt and Mr Wallace. As a consequence, we intend to bite our lips and our tongues in relation to some things that are said by quite a number of people who should not say them.

I ask the opposition to accept that we are doing everything we humanly can. If the Leader of the Opposition wants further information, I am very happy to make that available to him, and I extend that same courtesy to the member for Kingsford-Smith. Our efforts go on unrelieved in order to secure their release and it ought not to be a matter of any partisan political point scoring that that release has not yet been secured.