The Australian government has asked Cambodia to accept refugees seeking asylum in Australia in a move that has echoes of the former Labor government's so-called ''Malaysian solution''.
Cambodian Foreign Minister Hor Nam Hong said the request was made on Saturday morning during a meeting between his Australian counterpart, Julie Bishop, and Cambodian Prime Minister Hun Sen.
''In the past, there have been Cambodians going out as refugees to different countries. Now perhaps it is time for Cambodia to receive refugees back to Cambodia,'' Hor Nam Hong told journalists after a news briefing, adding the number of refugees had not been decided, but this would depend on Australia.
He said thousands of refugees were seeking asylum in Australia and given Cambodia's long history of wars and displaced people - who now form a significant diaspora in countries such as Australia, the United States and Canada - his country could now be in a position to accept refugees.
''We are taking this proposal very seriously,'' he said.
''There are now thousands of refugees seeking asylum in Australia. And Australia would like to see Cambodia accept some refugees to be settled in Cambodia.''
Cambodia has changed vastly since decades of war ended in the late 1990s.
''But in any case, my Prime Minister and myself this morning have told Australia that Cambodia will consider very seriously the request of Australia because before there were many Cambodians seeking asylum outside of Cambodia through the war, but now maybe it is the time for Cambodia to accept some of the foreign refugees in Cambodia,'' Hor Nam Hong said.
Ms Bishop, who is on a tour of south-east Asian nations, declined to take questions on the subject, but she noted Cambodia had contributed to the Bali Process on transnational crime, which encompassed people smuggling.
''We discussed the co-operation that has existed in the area of transnational crime, people smuggling, human trafficking, drug trafficking. There has been a significant level of co-operation between law enforcement operations and most definitely some joint operations that have been of some considerable success,'' Ms Bishop said.
Cambodia is one of Asia's poorest countries and dependent on hundreds of millions of dollars of foreign aid.
Australia sent $244 million to Cambodia over the past three years in an aid program that targeted health services and rural poverty.
A further $85 million has been pledged for 2013-14.
Hun Sen, a former cadre of the murderous Khmer Rouge that ruled the country in the 1970s, has faced months of anti-government protests after disputed elections in July.
Human rights groups say Cambodia has one of the worst human rights records in Asia.
Security forces in Phnom Penh have been cracking down on protesters, including striking garment workers.
Riot police opened fire on protesters last month, killing five people. More than 20 protesters have been jailed without charge for weeks.
Coalition MPs, when they were in opposition, were strongly critical of Labor's attempt to trade asylum seekers to Malaysia in 2011.
Scott Morrison, now the Immigration Minister, said asylum seekers could be beaten and linked it to the slaughter in Indonesia of cattle from Australia, which was then a big issue.
Under the Malaysian solution, scuttled by the High Court in August 2011, Australia was to initially send 800 asylum seekers to Kuala Lumpur.
Then prime minister Julia Gillard described the deal as potentially a ''big blow'' to people smugglers.