PARIS: President Emmanuel Macron on Tuesday invited New Caledonia leaders to talks next week on the future of the French overseas territory, a year after deadly separatist violence in the Pacific archipelago.
\nNew Caledonian elected officials, as well as political, economic and civil society leaders would be invited to the discussions to start on July 2, a source familiar with the matter said. It was not immediately clear where the meeting would be held.
\nThe French president in an invitation letter obtained by AFP said discussions would last \u201cas long as necessary\u201d to address key issues \u201cwith all the seriousness they deserve.\u201d
\n\u201cBeyond major institutional topics, I would like for our discussions to touch on economic and societal matters,\u201d Macron added.
\nHome to around 270,000 people and located nearly 17,000 kilometers (10,600 miles) from Paris, New Caledonia is one of several overseas territories that remain an integral part of France.
\nNew Caledonia has been ruled from Paris since the 1800s, but many indigenous Kanaks still resent France\u2019s power over their islands and want fuller autonomy or independence.
\nUnrest broke out in May 2024 after Paris planned to give voting rights to thousands of non-indigenous long-term residents, something Kanaks fear would leave them in a permanent minority, crushing their chances of winning independence.
\nThe riots \u2014 the most violent since the 1980s \u2014 led to the death of 14 people and billions of dollars in damage.
\nThe president\u2019s decision to host talks alongside the Minister for Overseas Manuel Valls also comes after a French court freed independence leader Christian Tein in June.
\nTein, who hails from the Kanak group, had been held in custody in eastern France since June 2024 over the rioting in the nickel-rich archipelago.
\nInvestigating magistrates concluded there was no proof that Tein was preparing an armed uprising against the government, according to a source close to the case.
\nThe last independence referendum in New Caledonia was held in 2021, and was boycotted by pro-independence groups over the impact of the Covid-19 pandemic on the Kanak population.
\nThe referendum was the last of three since 2018, all of which rejected New Caledonian independence.
\nSince the 2021 referendum \u2014 which pro-independence campaigners had requested be rescheduled \u2014 the political situation in the archipelago has been in deadlock.
\nValls led negotiations in May between pro-independence and anti-independence groups, but they did not \u201creach an agreement about the institutional future of the territory,\u201d Macron said in the invitation letter.
\nThe president in early June declared he wanted a \u201cnew project\u201d for New Caledonia.<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"
PARIS: President Emmanuel Macron on Tuesday invited New Caledonia leaders to talks next week on the future of the French overseas territory, a year after deadly separatist violence in the Pacific archipelago. New Caledonian elected officials, as well as political, economic and civil society leaders would be invited to the discussions to start on July …<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":4,"featured_media":82802,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"closed","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[5],"tags":[],"class_list":["post-82792","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","has-post-thumbnail","hentry","category-world"],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/nabanews.pk\/en\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/82792","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/nabanews.pk\/en\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/nabanews.pk\/en\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/nabanews.pk\/en\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/4"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/nabanews.pk\/en\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=82792"}],"version-history":[{"count":1,"href":"https:\/\/nabanews.pk\/en\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/82792\/revisions"}],"predecessor-version":[{"id":82809,"href":"https:\/\/nabanews.pk\/en\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/82792\/revisions\/82809"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/nabanews.pk\/en\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media\/82802"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/nabanews.pk\/en\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=82792"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/nabanews.pk\/en\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=82792"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/nabanews.pk\/en\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=82792"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}