France agrees terms with Pacific leaders for New Caledonia mission

NOUMEA

France has agreed terms with Pacific leaders seeking a fact-finding mission to riot-crippled territory New Caledonia, the French ambassador to the Pacific said at a regional summit Thursday.

The 18-nation Pacific Islands Forum, which counts French territory New Caledonia as a member, has been seeking to visit the archipelago in an effort to resolve months of deadly violence.

Pacific leaders were due to visit earlier in August, but the trip fell apart amid diplomatic squabbling over its terms of reference.

France's ambassador to the Pacific, Veronique Roger-Lacan, said those terms had now been settled, although the date of the mission was still to be decided.

"The mission will be an information mission," she told reporters at a key forum in the Pacific kingdom of Tonga.

"The time and duration of the mission will have to be decided, in discussion with the (forum), the French state, and the government of New Caledonia."

Unrest broke out in mid-May over a planned expansion of the electoral roll that indigenous Kanaks feared would dilute their vote and put independence forever out of reach.

The Kanak cause resonates widely in the Pacific bloc, which is stacked with former colonies now fiercely proud of their own hard-won sovereignty.

The pro-independence president of French Polynesia has urged France to adopt a different approach.

France sent thousands of troops and police to restore order in the archipelago, almost 17,000 kilometers (10,600 miles) from Paris.

The electoral reforms were suspended in June.