Forum to set watch over New Caledonia

Press, 7 August 1985, Page 8

Forum to set watch over New Caledonia

By

PATRICIA HERBERT

in Rarotonga

The South Pacific Forum will set up a watch-dog unit to monitor the devolution of power in New Caledonia to ensure that the French keep to their 1987 timetable. The decision was made yesterday, the first day of formal business, and was announced at the end of the afternoon session by the official spokesman, the New Zealand Prime Minister, Mr Lange. The New Caledonia issue was the first agenda item and occupied much of the day. Discussion centred on an initiative from the Kanak Socialist National Liberation Front (F.L.N.K.S.) to have New Caledonia put back on the United Nations decolonisation list. Mr 'Lange indicated that this would not succeed although it did have support among some forum members. He did not say which but Vanuatu is known to be one. The emerging view was

against reinscription at this stage, Mr Lange said, but a later forum might advance it if France backed down on its programme for change. He was referring to the Fabius plan under which the French Government has proposed regional assembly elections this year and ah act of self-determination before the end of 1987. Mr Lange said the forum felt it had been instrumental over a number of years in focusing attention on New Caledonia and that it believed it would be inappropriate to hand over the problem to the United National as an outside agency. Instead, it would act as external guarantor to ensure that there should be a “substantial backlash” should France renege. This is a live possibility and one F.L.N.K.S. is anxious about, as the French socialist Government will go to the polls this year and the Opposition parties are threatening an anti-inde-pendence stance on New Caledonia.

Mr Lange said the forum would establish an officials’ committee to monitor events, to liaise with the liberation movement and to report to the Ministerial party appointed last year. He said this would continue in existence to watch progress and that it would “really bark if things go wrong.” The forum had a strong conviction, he said, that devolution of power in New Caledonia was now entering a critical phase. This would suggest that the communique that will emerge at the end of the conference will pile the pressure on France. Mr Lange said there was a strong reaffirmation by all forum countries of the need for independence in New Caledonia and soon. There was also a yearning that this should be achieved without bloodshed. For all this solidarity, however, the forum found that it could not grant the F.L.N.K.S. application for observer status at Rarotonga on the ground that it

did not conform to the criteria for representation. According to guidelines established in 1978, the privilege is given only to political representatives who have the power to implement forum decisions and F.L.N.K.S. does not qualify. F.L.N.K.S.’ case seems to have brought these rules in to question as Mr Lange said they would be reviewed, an indication that opinion was divided on whether F.L.N.K.S. should be allowed in. Observer status was also denied to the President of French Polynesia, Mr Gaston Flosse. Mr Lange said there was scepticism among forum members at the level of self-government Mr Flosse could claim, given the degree of control France had over important aspects of his country’s affairs. He also said it would have been paradoxical to admit Mr Flosse while condemning French nuclear testing at Mururoa.