While in Busan, South Korea, to attend the Apec Summit, Australian Premier John Howard also took the opportunity to make a last-ditch effort to save a death-row Australian from the gallows in Singapore.

But he failed.

His Singapore counterpart Lee Hsien Loong (left) informed Howard that Singapore was unable to accede to the request, and that the law has to take its course.

According to a Bernama report, Australian Nguyen Tuong Van will be hanged at dawn at Changi Prison on Dec 2 after efforts by Australian leaders and rights groups to save him from the gallows proved futile.

Nguyen, 25, was sentenced to death by a Singapore court after he was found guilty of drug trafficking - an offence that attracts capital punishment in the republic. He was caught with 396gm of pure heroin strapped to his body at Changi Airport in December 2002.

Besides Howard, his foreign minister was also involved in the appeal.

In reply to a letter appealing for clemency from his Australian counterpart Alexander Downer, Singapore Foreign Minister George Yeo said: "Mr Nguyen imported almost 400gm of pure heroin which would have supplied more than 26,000 doses to drug addicts."

At home, activists and civil rights group such as Think Centre were calling for the abolition of the death sentence in the republic.

They urged judges and lawyers to make recommendations to the government "that their conscience as well as international human rights standards are calling for the abolition of the death penalty".

In the interim, Think Centre called for a moratorium on the death penalty.

Legal standards

At the international level, the Special Rapporteur on extrajudicial, summary or arbitrary executions of the United Nations Commission on Human Rights, Philip Alston , drew criticisms to himself after he called on the Singapore government not to proceed with Nguyen's execution.

Nguyen's execution, said Alston - an Australian and a law professor at New York University - would violate international legal standards relating to the imposition of the death penalty.

The principal problem, he said, was the mandatory nature of the death penalty, making it impossible to take into account "mitigating or extenuating circumstances and eliminates any individual determination of an appropriate sentence in a particular case".

Singapore reacted to Alston's statement, arguing that there was no international consensus that capital punishment should be abolished.

"Singapore maintains that capital punishment is a criminal justice issue; it is the sovereign right of every country to decide whether or not to include capital punishment within its criminal justice system," a Foreign Ministry spokesman said.

Lee affirmed Singapore's position by saying that it has to stand firm on drugs to protect its citizens from the scourge and to ensure the country does not become a conduit for the trafficking of illicit drugs.