Lawyers for an Australian who is to be hanged in Singapore in less than two weeks asked the Australian government today to take the case to an international court in a bid to stop the execution.
Lawyers for Nguyen Tuong Van (25) - who was convicted by Singapore of trying to smuggle 400 grams of heroin from Cambodia and is due to be hanged on December 2nd - want the United Nations International Court of Justice to hear the case.
Australian Foreign Minister Alexander Downer has said the plan was unlikely to be successful.
"There is something called the second optional protocol to the International Covenant on Civil and Political Rights which bans the death penalty but of course it is an optional protocol," Mr Downer told ABC radio today.
"A number of countries like Australia have signed it, Singapore hasn't," he said.
Nguyen, from Melbourne, was arrested in December 2002 at Singapore's Changi airport while in transit for Australia.
Australia has asked Singapore to reconsider clemency for Nguyen - who said he was carrying the drugs to help his brother pay off debts to loan sharks - because he had co-operated with authorities and could be a witness in future drug cases.
Australian Prime Minister John Howard, who met privately with Nguyen's mother last week, has dismissed calls for trade sanctions to be imposed on Singapore over what he described as "a desperately sad case".
He said: "There is great feeling and great conviction in our country that, on this occasion, the death penalty should not be imposed."
Amnesty International said in a 2004 report that about 420 people had been hanged in Singapore since 1991, mostly for drug trafficking, giving the city-state of 4.2 million people the highest execution rate in the world relative to population.