Australia can expect more boats carrying Lankans: Foreign Minister

There's a 'significant risk' more boat loads of displaced Sri Lankans will arrive on Australia's shores in the coming months, Foreign Minister Stephen Smith says.

The seventh boat load of asylum seekers to reach Australia this year was intercepted off the West Australian coast yesterday.

It was carrying 32 Sri Lankan men.

"There is clearly very grave potential for displaced people coming from Sri Lanka," Smith said.

"We're acutely conscious of concerns about these things."

Sri Lanka's Government claimed the Tamil Tigers were close to complete defeat.

A defence spokesman said more than 80,000 people had fled the shrinking patch of territory still controlled by the separatist guerrillas, but Sri Lankan troops were 'rescuing' and not harming civilians caught up in the war.

Smith said the Australian Government was 'very concerned' about people fleeing the Afghanistan-Pakistan border region and Sri Lanka.

Historically, it was the Sinhalese who sought asylum in Australia, but there was a 'significant risk' in the future it would be Tamils.

"The ongoing conflict in Sri Lanka is seeing a very considerable number of displaced peoples and that fact does add to the risk that some of them will seek to leave Sri Lanka by boat heading in Australia's direction," Smith said.

Australia had been in contact with the Sri Lankan Government, the Foreign Minister said.

But dialogue would increase as the Government worked to develop a closer relationship in order to tackle the issue of people smuggling, as it had done with Indonesia.

"We need to make sure that other transit countries, whether it's Sri Lanka or, for example, Malaysia, that we have the same working relationships and arrangements with them and that's what we're working very hard to achieve."

Smith also rejected opposition claims aerial surveillance 'missed' the latest arrival, which was intercepted 47 nautical miles southwest of Barrow Island after being tracked by air for a day.