New Caledonia Offered Sovereignty With Ties to France

PARIS —  In hopes of ending a distant but violent and troubling crisis, the French government on Monday offered its Pacific territory of New Caledonia an unusual form of independence--sovereignty and a seat in the United Nations while still legally associated with France.

The offer came from Edgard Pisani, the special representative of the French government, who was sent to New Caledonia a few weeks after trouble broke out in the islands in mid-November. Pisani, 66, once a minister in the government of President Charles de Gaulle and a former commissioner of the European Economic Community, went there with a mandate to come up with a solution to end the crisis.

Warning against the belief that New Caledonia has only two starkly opposed alternatives for its future, Pisani said: “France and independence. Why say one or the other instead of saying neither without the other? . . . The best solution, doubtless the only solution, is independence, but independence associated with France.”

There is no certainty that Pisani’s compromise plan, announced simultaneously in New Caledonia and France, will satisfy the antagonists. A large number of Caledonians, mostly whites from France, oppose any form of independence, and their cause has been supported staunchly by the large, conservative opposition parties in France.

After listening to Pisani’s radio speech in New Caledonia, Mayor Roger Laroque of Noumea, the capital, said, “It was blah-blah-blah in favor of independence. Nine-tenths of the speech was based on granting independence, and I am positively against (it).”

Nor did the proposals quiet the opponents within France. Michel Debre, a former premier under De Gaulle, called the Pisani plan “a grave error.” He said the Caledonians should simply be given a choice of whether they want to remain in the French republic or not.

The internal French debate has had a bitter tone during the last two months, with the opposition insisting that the government is abandoning the majority in New Caledonia to placate those Melanesians who want independence.

The violence, which has killed 15 people, most of them Melanesians favoring independence, has been covered extensively in French newspapers and on television.

Under the Pisani plan, which he described as the only way “that will lead to internal peace,” a referendum on the combination of independence and French association would be held in the territory in July. If approved, independence would be proclaimed next Jan. 1.

Before the referendum is held, however, Pisani said he will solicit the reactions of political leaders on New Caledonia and report to President Francois Mitterrand and Premier Laurent Fabius in Paris.

Although no independent country is now a legally associated state of France, the French constitution does provide for such a possibility.

A treaty of association between France and New Caledonia, as outlined by Pisani, would leave defense and public security in the hands of the French government. The treaty would spell out how France and New Caledonia would divide their authority over money, justice, credit, international transportation and telecommunications.

Pisani also proposed that Noumea, where many of the whites live, have a special status. The French living there, he went on, could keep French citizenship while holding a “privileged residence status” in the sovereign state of New Caledonia.

Its 145,000 people are divided ethnically in a way that causes great tension. The largest number, but less than a majority, are the 60,000 indigenous Melanesians known as Kanaks. The population also includes 50,000 French whites known as Caldoches, some of them descended from convicts deported to the islands in the 19th Century, and about 30,000 Polynesians and Asians from the Wallis and Futuna islands, Tahiti, Indonesia and Vietnam.

Many Kanaks, contending that only they, as the original people, have the right to determine New Caledonia’s future, boycotted an election Nov. 18 for a territorial assembly that was to prepare for a 1989 vote on self-determination. With the anti-independence forces in charge of the assembly, the nationalist Kanak Party then declared independence, set up a provisional government and started to occupy some headquarters of the French police.

Violence broke out on both sides.