'Australia risks retaliation if it stops Air Zim flights'

Australia’s The Age newspaper reported Monday that Zimbabwe was illegally using Australian air space en route to China via Singapore transporting ‘illicit’ goods.

Dr Ben Saul, director of Sydney's Centre for International Law, was quoted by The Age, the same newspaper that broke the story, as saying that “Australia's aviation authorities could stop the flights by refusing clearance but the consequences would ‘not be worth the price’.”

“There is right of innocent passage, which basically means you cannot stop the flights because you don't like the government,” he was quoted as saying.

Dr Saul also indicated that if the Aussie government wanted to restrict Air Zimbabwe flights from using their airspace they should make sure that the plane “did not pass over Australia's sovereign territory in the Indian Ocean including Ashmore Reef and Christmas Island.”

They could get away with this measure.

The Opposition in Australia wants the flights banned but government officials were more careful in their statement.

The country’s Foreign Minister Stephen Smith and Transport Minister Anthony Albanese were said to have issued a joint statement saying: “Air Zimbabwe flights between Harare and China via Singapore do not fly through air space over Australian territory, but through international air space managed by Airservices Australia on behalf of the International Civil Aviation Organisation.”

A spokesman for the Zimbabwe embassy in Canberra, Felix Nyamupinga, was reported by the Associated Press saying he knew of only one instance a month ago, during his three years in Australia of a Zimbabwe-registered plane gaining clearance to enter Australian air space.