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Bangkok: Immigration Minister Peter Dutton arrived in Phnom Penh bearing gifts for Cambodia's regime, which is rated as among the most corrupt in the world.
Cambodia's Immigration Department released photographs of Mr Dutton presenting the department's director-general, Sok Phal, with an Akubra hat on Wednesday.
Mr Dutton flew to Cambodia from Europe to salvage Australia's $55 million agreement to resettle refugees from Nauru in the impoverished nation.
Government leaders and ministers often exchange gifts at official meetings with representatives of other nations.
But the Abbott government had already given the regime of strongman Prime Minister Hun Sen $40 million in additional development aid in return for signing an agreement to accept refugees at a champagne-sipping ceremony last year.
Only four refugees among hundreds on Nauru have so far agreed to give up their hopes of reaching Australia to take a one-way flight to Cambodia, despite promises of large cash payments and other benefits, as part of arrangements that have cost Australian taxpayers another $15 million.
Before Mr Dutton arrived in Phnom Penh for a two-day visit on Wednesday, the controversial agreement with Australia appeared to have stalled after a senior Cambodian official declared the country had no plans to accept any more refugees until the first group had assimilated into Cambodian society.
But Mr Dutton and Australian officials appeared happy as they drank beer and coffee in a lounge of Phnom Penh's five-star Raffles Le Royale hotel after the minister met Mr Hun Sen, a notorious autocrat who is set to make an official visit to Australia early next year.
Mr Dutton said meetings he held with Mr Hun Sen and the country's powerful Interior Minister Sar Kheng "reinforced the commitment of both nations to the successful implementation of the resettlement arrangements of refugees from Nauru".
He indicated that more refugees on Nauru had "expressed interest in moving to Cambodia" but gave no details.
Sri Thamrong, a close adviser to Mr Hun Sen, told reporters after the meeting that Cambodia is "ready to accept more refugees … we will send our officials, a team from the Ministry of Interior, to interview them."
"We want to have more refugees come, a group of four or five people at a time," he said.
The deal with Australia was a long-awaited diplomatic triumph for Mr Hun Sen who for two years in the early 1970s was an officer in the murderous Khmer Rouge before he defected to Vietnam.
The US and other Western nations and human rights groups have been highly critical of Mr Hun Sen for presiding over 30 years of corruption, brutality and a readiness to subvert popular will.
In 2012 during a meeting of world leaders in Phnom Penh US President Barack Obama chided Mr Hun Sen on a range of human rights issues, including land seizures and political arrests, US State Department officials said at the time.
Australian writer Sebastian Strangio wrote in his book Hun Sen's Cambodia that very little of billions of dollars of aid money that Western governments have sent to Cambodian has reached the country's impoverished masses.
In the meantime, Mr Hun Sen and 20 or more of his closest associates have amassed billions of dollars in personal wealth, prompting Cambodia to be ranked near the bottom of Transparency International's index of 175 nations.
