Word: pisani
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...people have been killed since November in an increasingly bitter struggle over independence. After announcing the trip in a nationally televised interview, Mitterrand said he was going to the troubled territory to "express what I believe to be reason" and to show support for French Special Envoy Edgard Pisani, author of a controversial independence plan for the islands...
...down at Tontouta Airport, he was taken by helicopter to the New Caledonian capital of Noumea, 33 miles away. He was met by 25,000 anti-independence demonstrators waving French flags, singing the Marseillaise and displaying banners that read "Caledonie Francaise Toujours." In the morning, Mitterrand held meetings with Pisani and leaders on both sides of the independence issue...
...disturbances came just four days after the island had received a long- awaited independence proposal from the French government. In a television address, French Special Envoy Edgard Pisani outlined a plan under which New Caledonia would become a sovereign nation, yet remain bound to France by a special "treaty of association." The proposal was a compromise over a vexing issue: although the Kanaks were the original inhabitants of the territory, 930 miles east of Australia, they represent only 42.5% of the current population of 145,000. In their fight for independence, the militant Kanak Socialist National Liberation Front boycotted territorial...
...first the Pisani plan seemed to placate Jean-Marie Tjibaou, leader of the Liberation Front. But at week's end Tjibaou declared that his party would be content with nothing less than complete sovereignty. The caldoches continue to argue that the Pisani plan would lead to a Kanak takeover. Pisani declared a state of emergency throughout the territory, including a dawn-to-dusk curfew. In Paris, where Premier Laurent Fabius dispatched 1,000 fresh troops to New Caledonia, a political uproar was brewing. Right-wing opponents of President Francois Mitterrand's Socialist government joined the island's French community...
...Pisani's job will not be easy. The territory's French settlers are opposed by the native Melanesians, or Kanaks, who claim sovereignty over the territory and want only Kanaks to vote in the referendum on self-determination, which France had slated for 1989. The Kanaks have already installed Jean-Marie Tjibaou, 48, a former Roman Catholic priest, as provisional President. In order to prevent further violence, Pisani is expected to seek a speedier solution. Said a French government official: "It's obvious that we must move quickly...