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Canberra on Thursday denied asking Indonesia not to execute three convicted Australian drug smugglers this year out of concern it would harm Prime Minister Kevin Rudd’s re-election campaign.

As Australians Scott Rush, Andrew Chan and Myuran Sukumaran prepare final appeals against execution by firing squad, an Australian newspaper said senior diplomats met officials from the Indonesian Attorney General’s Office for talks on the trio.

“We would never tie the circumstances of people facing potentially death row or of consular cases or of people in trouble, we would never tie that to the election cycle,” acting Foreign Minister Simon Crean told Australian radio.

The three Australians are members of a group known as the Bali Nine, who were arrested in April 2005 in Bali with 8.3 kilograms of heroin strapped to their bodies, worth $3.5 million.

Rush and ringleaders Chan and Sukumaran were sentenced to death in 2006. Since their arrests, successive Australian governments have tried to ensure the death penalty is not carried out, including Rudd, who is favored to win a second term in elections later this year despite slipping polls.

Rudd has promised to raise the sentences with Indonesian President Susilo Bambang Yudhoyono when the court processes are concluded and if the death penalties still stand. That could come as soon as next month with Yudhoyono to visit Australia from March 9 to 11 to discuss security, development and environmental challenges, while also addressing Australia’s parliament.

Any approach for clemency would be a sensitive issue for both countries, with some Indonesian lawmakers and local media likely to see any approach by Rudd to Yudhoyono as interference.

Didiek Darmanto, a spokesman for Indonesia’s attorney general, was quoted by the Sydney Morning Herald newspaper as saying that while no direct request had been made to avoid 2010 executions, Australian Embassy officials in Jakarta had indirectly raised the issue.

“They told us that it was a sensitive political issue ahead of the election,” Didiek said, according to the paper.

On Wednesday, the Jakarta Globe reported that officials from the Australian Embassy visited the Attorney General’s Office on Tuesday to request information about Australian citizens who were facing the death sentence here, and to warn about the sensitivity of the pending executions at a time when Australia was preparing for elections.

Didiek said on Thursday that Tuesday’s visit was meant only to get information about Australians currently on death row for convictions under Indonesian law.

“They have no intention to intervene in our justice system, they only asked for the latest information on their citizens on death row,” Didiek said. “We explained to them that the Australian inmates — Myuran Sukumaran, Andrew Chan and Scott Anthony Rush — are currently in the process of requesting judicial reviews.”

“They told us that news reports on executions are very sensitive and potentially misleading. They need clarification to prevent any misinterpretation.”

Asked again if embassy officials tried to persuade the AGO not to hold the executions, Didiek said: “There was no such request.”

If requests for final judicial reviews by the three are rejected, the only avenue remaining is a direct plea for presidential clemency.