Prime Minister Elisabeth Borne began a series of bilateral discussions in Paris on Tuesday with the separatists and then the loyalists of New Caledonia with the aim of relaunching the dialogue on the institutional future of the archipelago.
Immediately after the first meeting, the Kanak Liberation Front (FLNKS) explained that the issues on the agenda were not its priority and that it had reminded the head of government of “the chaotic history of relations between France and the Kanak people”, since the taking possession of New Caledonia by France on September 24, 1853.
For the government, which has been trying to bring together separatists and non-independentists since the third referendum of December 12, 2021 to negotiate a future status for the territory, the trip of the FLNKS delegation to Paris marks however “a new important step”, indicated Matignon. in a statement Tuesday afternoon.
At the end of October, the State had failed to bring the separatists to a “partners’ convention” bringing together political but also economic actors to discuss the future of this Pacific territory.
These appointments will be followed by other meetings with the Minister of the Interior and Overseas Gérald Darmanin by the end of the week, around the essential questions of the electoral body currently frozen and the right to self-determination.
“We can discuss it from the moment when (the government) will tell us (…) what is the exit”, however posed at the end of the first interview the pro-independence president of the Congress, Roch Wamytan, recalling that ” the trajectory must lead us to full sovereignty, within a deadline to be determined”.
The separatists want the electorate to be frozen but want the right to self-determination to remain wide open in the new statute. Conversely, the loyalists demand that more inhabitants of New Caledonia be able to vote but want to limit the possibility of relaunching a process of self-determination for the archipelago.
Despite these positions of principle, “everyone arrives in Paris with a lack, we think that the meeting of these two lacks can make an agreement”, wants to believe Matignon.
The questions of the electorate and self-determination were all the same “raised (Tuesday) but very quickly because we have almost no mandate from the FLNKS to address these two questions”, however added Mr. Wamytan. .
The president of the Caledonian Union, one of the main components of the FLNKS, Daniel Goa indeed recalled last week that “at this stage, (our representatives) will not negotiate anything and no decision can be taken”.
For his part, Matignon assured that he was “convinced that an agreement is not possible without going through tripartite meetings and hoped that this format would be joined as soon as possible”. “If it’s this week, so much the better, but the FLNKS gave us to understand that it was unlikely,” added Matignon.
“We are not expecting a joint statement at the end of this session,” added the Interior Ministry.
The members of the non-independence delegation, for their part, expressed their desire to see these negotiations become trilateral, bringing together the State, the independentists and the non-independentists.
“In New Caledonia, as soon as we manage to get together around the table, we manage to find solutions,” said after the meeting with Prime Minister Sonia Backès, a member of the loyalist delegation.
“I recall that in 1988, we were in an armed conflict and that in the end we set up institutions which shared power, which set up an electoral body (…) In 1998, a agreement has been reached. Now the keys are in the hands of the separatists, “added Ms. Backès, who is also Secretary of State for Citizenship.
The Noumea Accord, signed in 1998, provided for three self-determination referendums. These three consultations rejected independence, but the last one, in December 2021, remains contested by the independence camp, which boycotted it due to the Covid pandemic.
The FLNKS has also initiated a procedure with the International Court of Justice in The Hague to have it annulled.
04/11/2023 17:20:24 – Paris (AFP) – © 2023 AFP
