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Vice President Mike Pence said on Saturday the United States would honor a controversial refugee deal with Australia which means 1,250 asylum seekers will be rehomed in America — a deal President Donald Trump had described as "dumb".

Pence told a joint news conference with Australian Prime Minister Malcolm Turnbull in Sydney that the deal would be subject to vetting, and that honoring it "doesn't mean that we admire the agreement".

"We will honor this agreement out of respect to this enormously important alliance," Pence said at Turnbull's harbor side official residence in Sydney.

Under the deal, agreed with former President Barack Obama late last year, the U.S. would resettle up to 1,250 asylum seekers held in offshore processing camps on South Pacific islands in Papua New Guinea and Nauru.

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In return, Australia would resettle refugees from El Salvador, Guatemala and Honduras.

The White House has already said it would apply "extreme vetting" to those asylum seekers, most of whom are on island camps on the Pacific nations of Nauru and Papua New Guinea. Australia has refused to accept them and instead pays for them to be housed on the impoverished islands.

The deal has taken on added importance for Australia, which is under political and legal pressure to shut the camps, particularly one on Papua New Guinea's Manus Island where violence between residents and inmates has flared.

Australia's relationship with the new administration in Washington got off to a rocky start when Trump lambasted Turnbull over the resettlement arrangement, which Trump labeled a "dumb" deal.

Do you believe it? The Obama Administration agreed to take thousands of illegal immigrants from Australia. Why? I will study this dumb deal! — Donald J. Trump (@realDonaldTrump) February 2, 2017

Pence was speaking on the final leg of a 10-day tour of the Asia-Pacific region that had already taken him to South Korea, Japan and Indonesia.

His trip to Australia is the first by a senior official in the Trump administration as the US looks to strengthen economic ties and security cooperation amid disputes in the South China Sea and tension on the Korean peninsula.

Pence said an aircraft carrier strike group, led by the USS Carl Vinson, heading for waters off the Korean peninsula would be in the Sea of Japan within days.

He said Washington believed that a nuclear-free Korean peninsula could be achieved peacefully because of the Trump administration's new engagement with China.