Kim Nguyen and son Khoa Nguyen leave the Singapore Changi Prison Tuesday after visiting Van Nguyen.(photo:AP)

   BEIJING, Dec.1 (Xinhuanet)-- The twenty-five years old Australian drug trafficker Nguyen Tuong Van is scheduled to be hanged tomorrow in Singapor for carrying 400 grams (0.9 pound) of heroin while in transit at Changi airport in 2002.

    Nguyen's mother Kim Nguyen pleaded to be allowed a final embrace with her son before he goes to the gallows early Friday. Australian Foreign Minister Alexander Downer backed her plea and request that Kim Nguyen be allowed a final huge with her condemned son.

    Joseph Koh, Singapore's high commissioner to Australia, gave a rare media interview on the case Thursday, saying he did not know what his government had decided on whether the mother and son would be allowed to embrace one last time.

    "We have noted Mr. Downer's request," Koh told Australian Broadcasting Corp. radio. "I do not know of any decision." Koh did not directly answer when asked whether he thought that refusing clemency would damage relations between the two countries.

    "I think the bigger picture is that Singapore highly values good relations with Australia and with Australian leaders," Koh said. "We share a common belief in the sanctity of the law."

    "It is for this reason that the Singapore Cabinet actually deliberated at length on the clemency petition," he added."Singapore respected Australia's choice to abolish capital punishment in the 1970s," he said.

    "But we hope that Australia and Australians would also likewise respect Singapore's sovereign choice in imposing the death penalty for the most serious crimes, including drug trafficking," Koh said.

    Singapore has previously rejected requests from family and loved ones to have any physical contact with condemned prisoners. The inmates are separated from their visitors at Changi prison by a pane of glass.

    Earlier on, Singapore has rejected repeated clemency pleas -- including the Australian government's -- for the Vietnam-born Australian, who received a mandatory death sentence after he was arrested at Singapore's Changi Airport in 2002 en route from Cambodia to Australia's southern city of Melbourne carrying 396 grams (14 ounces) of heroin.

    According to Singapore's laws, anyone aged 18 or over convicted of carrying more than 15 grams (0.5 ounces) of heroin receives an automatic sentence of execution by hanging.

    About 420 people have been hanged in Singapore since 1991,mostly for drug trafficking.

    The Australia government is considering calls from church leaders and some government lawmakers to hold one minute's silence for Nguyen on Friday.

    (Agencies)