Azerbaijian’s National Assembly Chair Sahiba Gafarova (left) and pro-independence Congress member Omayra Naisseline signed a memorandum of cooperation in Bakou. Photo: Bakou Initiative Group
New Caledonia's newly-elected President of the Congress, Veylma Falaeo, has officially declared a controversial deal signed in April with the Parliament of Azerbaijan "null and void".
Speaking to local media on Monday, Falaeo referred to a memorandum signed in Baku on 18 April between a Congress member of New Caledonia's Union Calédonienne party (pro-independence), Omayra Naisseline and the President of the Azeri Parliament.
The deal was then presented as a cooperation step between the two institutions.
At the time, pictures of the signing also showed the pro-independence flag being ostentatiously placed on the desk before the two signatories.
The document signed by Naisseline, who said at the time she was mandated by then Congress President, pro-independence leader Roch Wamytan, "must be regarded as null and void", the new Congress chair told reporters in Nouméa.
She added she had "no mandate to sign it".
New Caledonia government's pro-independence Mickaël Forrest (left) takes part in the Bakou Initiative Group’s (BIG) Congress of French Colonies in Azerbaijan. Photo: BIG
Wamytan, who was voted out as Congress chair in August, told local media he "takes note" of the invalidation, but regretted New Caledonia's "radicalised right-wing" parties (opposed to independence) to seize every opportunity to prevent some countries from supporting them in their struggle.
After the vote that removed Wamytan from as Congress chair, which he had held for five years, supporters of a new leader, in an eleventh-hour and surprise alliance, said removing Wamytan was the main motive.
The deal signed with Azerbaijan caused outrage within the Congress's loyalists ranks.
Pro-France MPs within the Congress at the time denounced the signing of the deal while the local House had not been informed or consulted beforehand.
International Liberation Front against French colonialism established by the independence movements of French overseas territories. Photo: Baku Initiative Group
'Liberation Front'
During a meeting held in July in Baku by a "Baku Initiative Group", delegations from French territories including Corsica, Guadeloupe, Martinique (French Caribbean), New Caledonia (with local government pro-independence member Mickaël Forrest in attendance) signed what was described as the birth declaration of a so-called "Liberation Front".
It was said to aim at "uniting the efforts of French colonies in their decolonisation process".
The controversial, self-styled "Congress of French Colonies" meeting took place on 17 and 18 July in the Azeri capital and was attended by several French overseas territories, including French Polynesia and New Caledonia.
Over the past few months, especially since the New Caledonia unrest began in mid-May, then-French Home Affairs and Overseas Territories Minister Gérald Darmanin publicly accused Azerbaijan of "extremely harmful interference" in French internal affairs, including the ongoing civil unrest crisis in New Caledonia].
Baku has persistently denied this.
Signing of the International Liberation Front against French colonialism established by the independence movements of French overseas territories. Photo: Baku Initiative Group
Highly sensitive subject
In July, anti-independence Congress member and freshly-re-elected MP at the French National Assembly, Nicolas Metzdorf, took the case to court, alleging the participation of a New Caledonian government member in the trip was tantamount to "treason", "conspiring with a foreign power" and "affecting the French nation's fundamental interests".
Most of the pro-France, anti-independence parties in New Caledonia have also strongly condemned the Baku trip.
