Old Foes Sign Peace Plan for New Caledonia

Leaders of the whites and Melanesians of New Caledonia, intractable enemies only a few weeks ago, signed an agreement in Paris on Sunday designed to restore peace to the troubled French archipelago in the South Pacific.

The accord, coming after an exhausting night of negotiations, was widely looked on as a personal victory for Michel Rocard, the new Socialist premier, and a boost for President Francois Mitterrand’s proclaimed program of opening his government to advice and proposals from outside Socialist ranks. Rocard had consulted conspicuously with former Premier Raymond Barre, a conservative, before helping the whites and Melanesians hammer out their agreement.

“Take hope again,” Rocard said in a statement aimed at the 145,000 people of New Caledonia. “A new page can now be written, not by arms but by dialogue and tolerance, by work and good will.”

Emotions were intensely bitter and racial relations at a nadir during the week before the final round of the presidential election May 8 when followers of the Melanesian independence movement killed four gendarmes and kidnaped almost a score more. In a move widely regarded as a bid to win votes at home, Premier Jacques Chirac, the conservative candidate for president, ordered an attack on the kidnapers that left two gendarmes and 19 Melanesians dead. Despite the move, Mitterrand defeated Chirac decisively.

The agreement was signed by Rocard and by two men that hardly any one, at the time of these troubles, could imagine sitting around the same table in a few weeks: Jacques Lafleur, a rightist white politician and economic baron of the islands, and Jean-Marie Tjibaou, a former priest who leads the Melanesian independence movement. After meeting for the first time two weeks ago, they concluded their agreement in a session that lasted from 7 p.m. Saturday until 4 a.m. Sunday.

Just before the elections, Bernard Pons, Chirac’s minister of overseas territories and a close ally of Lafleur, had even asked the French government to ban Tjibaou’s party, the Socialist and Kanak National Liberation Front. Chirac, though he continually described Tjibaou as a terrorist, made no attempt to implement Pons’ request, knowing that no party could be banned without the official approval of Mitterrand.

Pons, now an ex-minister whose handling of New Caledonia has been derided more and more in the aftermath of the May troubles, still sounded suspicious of Tjibaou while speaking on French radio Sunday night. Pons said it still remained to be seen whether Tjibaou could be trusted to live up to his end of an agreement.

Details of the agreement were not made public pending its official presentation by Rocard on Wednesday to Mitterrand and the council of ministers. Rocard said the agreement will be submitted to a national referendum in France later this year.

It was assumed, however, that the accord follows the main lines of proposals put forward by Rocard recently on the basis of a report submitted by a special task force that spent 19 days talking with representatives of all views in New Caledonia.

Plans for Division

Rocard called for the division of New Caledonia into three self-governing regions and proposed that the New Caledonians vote on their own future status in a self-determination referendum 10 years from now. In the meantime, he suggested restrictions on immigration to make sure that a large influx of non-Melanesians do not make the present difficult racial make-up even worse.

The core of the problem in New Caledonia lies in this racial imbalance. The native Melanesians, who are known as Kanaks, make up only 43% of the 145,000 residents but dominate almost every part of the territory except Noumea and its surroundings. The whites, some descended from leftist members of the Paris commune exiled to the South Pacific after 1870, make up 37% of the population but are joined in their opposition to independence by the rest of the population, mainly Polynesian and Asian immigrants.

In their two years of power, Chirac and Pons lined up with Lafleur, who is a member of their Gaullist party, the Rally for the Republic. They pushed policies that clearly favored the whites over the Melanesians. This attempt to override the views of the Melanesian minority triggered widespread discontent and violence.

The failure of the Chirac-Pons approach was etched by the speed with which their ally, Lafleur, once Mitterrand was reelected, faced up to the necessity of reconciliation and agreed to negotiate with Tjibaou.

After signing the agreement, Lafleur said, “I have the feeling that we succeeded in understanding . . . that we must know how to give, know how to forgive.”