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go through Naomi Selvaratnam In New Caledonia
(ABC – Australia) It all started with an enticing offer: an all-expenses-paid trip to Baku, the capital of Azerbaijan.
Last July, Roch Wamytan, a prominent leader of New Caledonia’s independence movement, accepted an invitation to fly to the former Soviet country for a series of meetings.
On the surface, everything seems normal.
Azerbaijan is hosting a meeting of the Non-Aligned Movement, an organization formed during the Cold War of countries that chose not to align themselves with any one major power bloc.
But the host soon revealed another motive.
During one of the meetings, a new organization called the “Baku Initiative Group” was established at the initiative of Azerbaijani President Ilham Aliyev.
Soon after, one of the group’s members, whose stated goal was to help French territories “fight colonialism,” approached Mr. Vamitan with a proposal.
“They offered to give us financial assistance,” Mr. Wamitan told reporters. Foreign Correspondents“But considering the (French) government’s request, or opposition, we did not accept it.”
The offer to help finance New Caledonia’s independence movement is the latest in a series of targeted attempts by Azerbaijan to exert influence over the South Pacific archipelago. New Caledonia is a French overseas territory and one of Australia’s closest neighbors.
The details of the proposal, revealed by Foreign Correspondent, come amid allegations that Azerbaijan waged a seditious campaign to deliberately undermine French rule during recent unrest in New Caledonia.
Over the past year, the islands on Australia’s doorstep have emerged as a new front in an ongoing dispute between France and Azerbaijan, two countries thousands of kilometres apart and located on opposite sides of the world.
Dispute between France and Azerbaijan
Relations between France and Azerbaijan have deteriorated sharply in recent years, largely due to the ongoing conflict between Azerbaijan and neighboring Armenia over the disputed region of Nagorno-Karabakh.
France supports Armenia in the dispute, which has heightened tensions between Armenia and Azerbaijan.
Tensions have escalated further in recent months as both sides accuse each other of foreign interference.
Azerbaijani flags began appearing at independence rallies in New Caledonia late last year with the formation of the Baku Initiative Group.
It was an unusual sight and the first sign that something was wrong.
Then in November, French online disinformation agency Viginum accused actors linked to Azerbaijan of orchestrating a disinformation campaign calling for a boycott of the Olympics.
Azerbaijan denies this.
Just weeks later, French media reported that French security services arrested and deported two Azerbaijani journalists from New Caledonia who they believed were spying in the region.
Shortly thereafter, Azerbaijani authorities arrested a French citizen on suspicion of being a spy.
Azerbaijan’s ambassador to France claimed in a statement at the time that the French citizen was arrested on “suspected espionage activities.”
Then in April, the links between the Azerbaijani government and the New Caledonian independence movement became more explicit.
Rokhvamitan sent representatives to Baku to sign a memorandum of understanding with the Azerbaijani parliament, pledging to “carry out inter-parliamentary cooperation and strengthen friendly relations between the peoples of Azerbaijan and New Caledonia.”
The move sparked controversy among pro-France members of New Caledonia’s loyalist parties, but Wamitan said the agreement was not unusual.
“Parliaments around the world have signed agreements to cooperate,” he said.
“For example, the friendship between the peoples of our two countries, the mutual visits of elected representatives of New Caledonia to Azerbaijan and Azerbaijan to hold talks and discuss cross-cutting issues of mutual interest to both sides and us.”
Adding fuel to the fire
New Caledonia has been mired in unrest since May, with independence campaigners concerned that changes to the electoral roll will undermine their voting rights.
Dr. Pierre-Christophe Penz, associate researcher in geopolitics at the University of New Caledonia, said the financial assistance provided by Azerbaijan would only exacerbate an already volatile situation.
“In fact, Azerbaijan’s behavior in New Caledonia is what we call ‘hybrid warfare,'” he said.
“We feel that today Azerbaijan’s interest in New Caledonia … is a bit like Azerbaijan targeting France’s Achilles’ heel in the Pacific.”
While these attacks on France are nothing new, Dr Pentz said the offer of money represented a dramatic escalation in allegations of foreign interference.
“It’s one thing to be able to organize meetings to discuss issues of colonialism, issues of French imperialism, but it’s another to provide logistical and financial support to the New Caledonian independence movement,” he said.
Roch Vamitan told foreign journalists that he also feared the consequences of accepting funding from France’s enemies, which was one of the reasons he rejected the proposal.
“If they offer us billions of Pacific francs, that would create problems, so we don’t want to think about that,” Mr Wamitan said.
“So we only accept airfare, for example, the invitation we recently received for the Vienna conference, in which case they cover everything. It is a form of aid and it is enough for us, otherwise it would create too many problems.”
He said the Baku Initiative group “did not specify how much aid it was willing to provide.”
“They just said, our principle is to help countries that are fighting around the world, but we didn’t talk about the amount because we just stayed in principle: will you accept our help? We said no, because it’s too complicated to manage.”
The French government has expressed concern about Azerbaijan’s attempts to interfere in New Caledonia.
When the unrest broke out, Interior Minister Gérald Darmanin told France 2 television: “This is not a fantasy. This is reality. I regret that some of Caledonian pro-independence leaders reached an agreement with Azerbaijan. This is indisputable.”
At the time, the Azerbaijani government denied claims of foreign interference, but that did not stop it from trying to further undermine the French government.
During the Noumea riots in May, French online disinformation agencies stole another social media campaign from Azerbaijan, this time targeting the riots.
When the protests began, thousands of posts began to circulate on X (formerly Twitter) and Facebook, including an image of a man holding a rifle, standing in a firing position, with a dead Kanak protester behind him, and the caption “French police are murderers.”
The image was doctored by merging two different photos to make it appear that the man shot the protester.
The investigation found that the authors of the posts were linked to the New Azerbaijan Party (YAP), the Azerbaijan presidential party.
Mr Vamitan is not worried, however, about France’s frosty relations with Azerbaijan.
“We try to find, how do you put it, relationships with countries that can help us escape this system,” he said.
“In fact, Azerbaijan is helping us for its own reasons that we are not involved in. Azerbaijan’s help is very important.”
This relationship further troubles France due to Azerbaijan’s friendly relations with Russia.
Dr. Pants believes that Azerbaijan is trying to create trouble in the region, making it vulnerable to exploitation by other countries.
“Azerbaijan is just the tip of the iceberg,” he said, “but there is now a lot of evidence that Azerbaijan is also supported by major powers such as Russia and Turkey.”
“And it can often be said that ‘the enemy of my enemy is my friend’. But in this case we can clearly see that there is a channel through which French interests can be pursued, through New Caledonia, by Azerbaijan and indirectly by Russia.”
The Baku Initiative did not respond to questions from foreign journalists.
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