Indonesia has reaffirmed its intention to execute two Australian drug smugglers, despite continuing high-level diplomatic efforts from Australia to prevent their deaths.



Indonesia’s attorney general declared on Friday that “nothing whatsoever” could stop the execution of Andrew Chan and Myuran Sukumaran from going ahead, promising they would face the firing squad as soon as possible.

And the Indonesian president, Joko Widodo, seemed to echo that message, saying that a recent delay to the execution was down to technical issues rather than due to any pressure from Australia.



Meanwhile, the Australian foreign minister, Julie Bishop, confirming she had contacted the Indonesian vice-president by telephone on Thursday.

Indonesian authorities have said that Chan, 31, and Sukumaran, 33, ringleaders of the so-called Bali Nine heroin trafficking group, will be among the next group of prisoners on death row to be executed.

But the pair were given a glimmer of hope this week when their scheduled transfer from Bali to the high-security prison where they are due to be shot was postponed.

In her phone call to Jusuf Kalla, Bishop reportedly thanked the Jakarta government for delaying the men’s transfer to the execution site on Nusakambangan island. She told Fairfax Media she also appealed directly to Kalla for an indefinite stay of execution and emphasised Australia’s willingness to work with Indonesia to combat the drugs trade.



“Both of our countries are victims of drug syndicates. We’ve proposed ways we can work together to save the lives of Indonesians from the drug problem and I reiterated that to Mr Kalla,” she told Fairfax.



But, despite Bishop’s expression of gratitude, Widodo dismissed the suggestion the delay was due to Australian complaints.



“No, there was none [complaints from Australia],” he said. “This is our area of sovereignty. It is only a technical problem, ask the attorney general.”



The attorney general, Muhammad Prasetyo, said the executions would proceed “as soon as possible”.

“There’s basically nothing whatsoever that will hamper the implementation of this decision,” he told reporters Friday.

Prasetyo said logistical difficulties involving capacity at Nusa Kambangan – the notorious island prison where five inmates were executed last month – had prevented the two Australians being transferred this week as planned.

Australia had also requested the men be granted more time with their families, he added.

Indonesia executed six drug offenders in January, including five foreigners, prompting a furious Brazil and the Netherlands – whose citizens were among those put to death – to recall their ambassadors.

Jakarta has remained tight-lipped about when the Australians’ executions will take place, and which other foreign inmates will join the two condemned.

Prisoners from France, Brazil, Ghana and Nigeria have also lost their bids for presidential clemency – the final avenue of appeal for a death row convict.

Tension has been building between Jakarta and Canberra over the fate of the two prisoners and on Friday the Australian prime minister, Tony Abbott, was again accused in Indonesia of making threats in his bid to save the pair.

Abbott said this week that Indonesia should remember the significant financial aid Australia provided in the aftermath of the devastating 2004 tsunami that killed 170,000 Indonesians.

According to Fairfax, Bishop assured Kalla that Abbott’s comments were meant only to emphasise the history of friendship between their two countries.

Abbott himself had also denied the comment was threatening, but Indonesia’s foreign minister, Retno Marsudi, on Friday suggested Jakarta felt otherwise.

“We will not respond to an emotional statement, which was a threat in nature,” she said, adding she did not think Indonesia owed Australia anything for their tsunami aid.

Marsudi added that Indonesia had been helping Australia by stopping the Bali Nine from bringing drugs into the country.

“So, the convicts persons would have bought the goods [drugs] into Australia. So actually in fact we saved those goods, stopped the goods so they were not carried out [of the country].”

Widodo has vowed to refuse clemency to narcotics dealers while Indonesia is facing a “drug emergency”.

Some analysts speculate he is taking a tough stance on the issue to appear decisive to his critics early in his presidency.

Lawyers for Chan and Sukumaran have challenged Widodo’s decision to deny them clemency, and hope a hearing next Tuesday in Jakarta will result in their executions being postponed.

Abbott continued to argue against the execution on Friday, saying Chan and Sukumaran’s rehabilitation had made them a “weapon against drugs”.

“I absolutely know that their [Indonesia’s] drug problem is, if anything, worse than ours, and I can understand their desire to crack down in the toughest possible way on drug crime,” Abbott told reporters on Friday.

“But these two Australians are now a weapon against drugs. That’s what they are. They are a weapon against drugs and why would you deny yourself access to that at a difficult time for your country.”

Australia’s attorney general George Brandis reiterated that the country was doing all it could to stay the executions.

“What we are all united in doing... government, opposition, indeed every voice in the parliament, is appealing to the Indonesian government, as the prime minister has done, as the foreign minister has done, as the parliament speaking collectively has done, as I have done with my opposite number in Indonesia, to ask for the lives of these two men to be spared.”