X-Post: Pacific Scoop - The Diplomacy of Decolonisation 2 – Siding with France in the Pacific.

Source: Pacific Scoop

19:22 November 2, 2012 0 comments

French Polynesian leader Oscar Temaru … slow but growing support for decolonisation. Image: Cook Islands News

Australia has remarkably strong ties with France in the Pacific – and they are stifling the drive toward independence of countries like New Caledonia. The second report of a special two-part series.
Pacific Scoop:

Analysis – By Nic Maclellan

As Australia prepares to take up a seat on the UN Security Council in 2013, the UN decolonisation agenda will affect Australia’s relations with neighbouring Pacific countries. However, recent actions by the Gillard Labor government suggest that Canberra has chosen sides with France and the United States on this often-ignored agenda at the United Nations.

From 1946, the United Nations has maintained a list of non-self-governing territories seeking political independence. Just 16 territories remain on the list, including five Pacific islands, though others are seeking to be relisted. Twenty five years ago, at the height of the conflict between supporters and opponents of independence, Australia supported New Caledonia’s successful bid for re-inscription on the list of countries to be decolonised.

This French Pacific dependency has been scrutinised by the UN Special Committee on Decolonisation ever since — the governments of France and New Caledonia even invited the UN committee to hold its regional seminar in Noumea in 2010. In French Polynesia, the coalition government led by long-time independence campaigner Oscar Temaru has been seeking the same sort of international support.
In spite of tough economic times at home — with falling numbers of tourists and changing French subsidies after the end of nuclear testing — Temaru has been seeking regional and international support to be relisted with the United Nations decolonisation process.

Significant shift

Since Temaru was first elected President in 2004, there has been a slow but significant shift in local opinion.
Last year, the Territorial Assembly in Pape’ete narrowly voted for the first time to support Temaru’s call for reinscription.

In August 2012, the synod of the Eglise Protestante Maohi (EPM) — the Protestant church that is the largest denomination in French Polynesia — voted for the first time to support reinscription. The Pacific Conference of Churches (PCC) and World Council of Churches (WCC) have also supported the call.

In spite of this, Australia has sided with Paris to reject French Polynesia’s call for increased UN scrutiny.
Parliamentary Secretary for Pacific Island Affairs Richard Marles, in an interview published in Islands Business magazine, recently said: “We absolutely take our lead from France on this.”

In recent years, Australia and France have signed a series of agreements that cement relations on defence, aid co-operation and joint exploration for oil and gas reserves in the waters between Australia and New Caledonia — culminating last January in a Joint Statement on Strategic Partnership. For many years, Australia and France have expanded defence cooperation in the Pacific, through port visits, joint military exercises, arms deals and meetings between senior military officers.

Military exercises

The Southern Cross military exercises held every two years in New Caledonia are a key part of regional military cooperation, with US marines joining Australia and French troops in the latest wargames in October.
Since 1992, the France-Australia-New Zealand (FRANZ) agreement has provided a mechanism for joint humanitarian and maritime surveillance operations in the South Pacific. The 2009 Australia-France Defence Cooperation Agreement (DCA) strengthens the defence partnership, but is underlined by French efforts to increase arms sales to Australia: by 2006, Australia was the second largest purchaser of French armaments in the world.

Eurocopter, a subsidiary of the giant European Aeronautic Defence and Space company (EADS), is successfully competing with American arms manufacturers to sell helicopters and other equipment to the Australian Defence Force (ADF).

France and Australia are also co-operating in joint exploration of the waters between Queensland and New Caledonia. Geoscience Australia and French research agencies have conducted joint surveys of the ocean floor near the Capel and Faust Basins, looking for sediments that would indicate deep water reserves of oil and gas.

In March 2010, the signing of a “Declaration of Intention between Australia and France (on behalf of New Caledonia) over Coral Sea Management” signalled increased joint operations over reef ecology and maritime resources in these waters. For some, the sight of France as the administering power making decisions over New Caledonia’s resources brings back memories of Australia’s deal with Indonesia over the oil reserves of the Timor Gap.

A further sign of Australia-France relations is a partnership agreement signed in July 2011 between Australia’s aid agency AusAID and the French equivalent Agence française de développement (AFD). This agreement opens the way for co-operation in Africa and Afghanistan, but also allows for joint programs in the Pacific.

Strategic partnership

All these agreements culminated in the signing of the Joint Statement of Strategic Partnership in January 2012. At the time, Foreign Minister Kevin Rudd and his French counterpart Alain Juppe signed the agreement in Paris, which highlights joint commitments on Afghanistan, nuclear non-proliferation, terrorism, global economic reform and the Pacific.

Australia’s global partnership with France seems to be affecting  its policies in the islands region. Even though many Pacific states have publicly stated their support for French Polynesia’s bid for re-inscription at the United Nations, the August 2012 meeting of the Pacific Islands Forum reaffirmed the Australian position, calling for further dialogue between Paris and Pape’ete.

A month later, however, many Pacific leaders lined up at the UN General Assembly to publicly support French Polynesia’s right to self-determination. The leaders of Fiji, Samoa, Solomon Islands and Vanuatu explicitly called for action on decolonisation.

Vanuatu’s Prime Minister Sato Kilman said: “I call on the independent and free nations of the world to complete the story of decolonisation and close this chapter. At this juncture, I urge the United Nations not to reject the demands for French Polynesia’s right to self-determination and progress.”

The same month, with Fiji’s Foreign Minister in attendance, the 16th Summit of the Non-Aligned Movement in Tehran issued a new policy on decolonisation, which noted: “The Heads of State or Government affirmed the inalienable right of the people of French Polynesia — Maohi Nui to self-determination in accordance with Chapter XI of the Charter of the United Nations and the UN General Assembly resolution 1514 (XV).”

With the other French Pacific dependency of New Caledonia scheduled to hold a referendum on its future political status after 2014, the question of France’s role in the South Pacific isn’t going away soon.

This is part two of Nic Maclellan’s series on Decolonisation originally published in New Matilda. Part one can be found here.

Part 1: Plenty of Pacific flashpoints to challenge officials

More information:

Overseas Territories Review

SiFM post : Scratch a Lover, Find A Foe - The Current Geopolitics of Decolonization.

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Objects In Mirror Are Closer Than They Apppear- The Relevance Of Pacific Islands Forum To Fiji.

The 43rd Pacific Islands Forum (PIF) in Cook Islands has been hyped as a much anticipated affair, not so much about the agenda, but more so about the invited guests-some with a higher profile than others. In a press briefing, PIF General Secretary, Neori Slade, admonished the journalists covering the PIF: “So if you can concentrate without getting too hyper on personalities (like US secretary of state Hillary Clinton) I think we’ll appreciate it.” 

Slade also mentioned that ,the journalists should not be sidetracked about the major powers attending the Forum and adroitly maneuvered the conversation to the prepared talking points of the PIF agenda. An important consideration, is that, the major power players attending the PIF did not travel thousands of miles to the Cook Islands, to chat about the dangers of climate change or just to exchange diplomatic niceties.

It is about furthering their own interests and maintaining their spheres of influence. Steven Ratuva, a Pacific affairs specialist at Auckland University, expressed his opinion with Pacific Scoop  regarding the current affairs: " [T]he US was trying to establish dominance in the Forum this year was because China had a strong foothold with the MSG, a powerful body in terms of its political power within the Forum, particularly through funding of infrastructure and supporting MSG operations.”


Graham Davis latest posting on Grubsheet, illustrated the undulated diplomatic landscape:

Hilary Clinton, who is making the first visit to a Forum summit by a US Secretary of State. Clinton knows that Fiji is too big to be ignored, too strategically important to be sidelined and that it’s high time its isolation was ended. This is almost certain to be the last time Bainimarama is excluded as America works this week to persuade its ANZUS partners, in particular, to bring him in from the cold.

There is no doubt that, the intransigent policies from Canberra and Wellington in isolating Fiji has resoundingly failed, and under girded their own shortcomings. Ratuva added: “[I]n spite of being suspended from the Forum, Fiji has some cards falling its way[...]Instead of weakening Fiji’s position, the suspension is actually strengthening it.”

Unquestionably, Fiji's suspension from PIF has opened up alternative channels of diplomatic exchanges, that invariably makes the PIF inextricably, obsolete. In an opinion piece in the The Australian,  Michael O'Keefe, addressed the challenges to the PIF: "[The Pacific Islands Forum] will either forge a new path for the region's pre-eminent institution or give ground to the alternative architecture that has grown since Fiji's suspension from participation."

Fiji Hosts 3rd Engaging the Pacific Meeting -Pacific SIDS (video posted below)



Ratuva addressed the benefits of the 'free agent' status of Fiji's diplomacy: “[...]Fiji can do anything, it can mobilise its ‘alternative forum’ outside the Forum, and it has also strengthened the Melanesian Spearhead Group, because now the MSG is keeping tightly close as a group because they came around through Fiji’s support.”


Davis points out the waning relevance of the PIF:

Clinton knows that the Pacific Forum is a shadow of its former self so long as Fiji is excluded. Why? Because no Pacific plan of action can realistically be implemented without the country’s participation. It is too significant and too influential to be bypassed. It has also successfully defied all attempts by its bigger southern neighbours -Australia and NZ – to bring it to heel and has demonstrated a nimble dexterity to find support wherever it can.

O'Keefe added to the narrative of failed policies of isolating Fiji:

The rise of alternative forms of regionalism is a direct result of Fiji's suspension and poses the largest challenge to Australia[...]Fiji has made new friends and opened up new avenues of co-operation and as Australia chooses to re-engage it will be operating in a vastly different Pacific seascape. In this climate the continuing relevance of the PIF will need to be demonstrated rather than simply asserted. Fiji is not likely to accept the status quo and may need to be encouraged to resume its engagement with PIF.

Among Fiji's alternative diplomatic engagements, is their attendance to the Non-Alignment -Movement (NAM) Summit in Tehran; currently in session.

Analysis of NAM group. (video posted below)

This 120 member group of countries, include notable members of the BRICS, have come of age and are quietly overshadowing the Western bloc of countries, in terms of influence in shaping World affairs. NAM accounts for 14% of the World's GDP. There are three NAM Pacific island nations: Fiji, Papua New Guinea and Vanuatu, who are also members of the Melanesian Spearhead Group (MSG).

NAM policies are diametrically opposite to that of the ANZUS alliance, with respect to Non-Interference. Australia and New Zealand's role in Pax-Americana have eroded any perception of being a honest broker in the Pacific region. Notwithstanding, the tainted colonial history of the Trans-Tasman cousins, further compounds this .

This diplomatic coalescing of MSG and NAM principles in Pacific affairs, would represent a significant threat to the interests and influence of the Trans-Tasman countries in the region. There appears to be a similar situation of failed isolation policies affecting both Fiji and Iran. In both cases, Western aligned countries have attempted to isolate them.

In both cases, each have been recently elected to chair the important nation groups-MSG and NAM respectively. The policies and its architects, have since demonstrably been rejected. Without a doubt, these series of diplomatic Faux Pas in the Western Alliance, underscores their demise of influence. In discussions with Metropolitan neighbors and the Island diplomats, the stakes in the Pacific are simply undermentioned; but the leverage the Islanders wield are widely understood.

Post-Script:

Fars News: Iran to establish diplomatic ties with Fiji.

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