PARIS: France’s Environment Minister Agnes Pannier-Runacher decided on Wednesday to stay away from the COP29 global climate change conference in Baku after “unacceptable” attacks by Azerbaijan’s President Ilham Aliyev.

Aliyev had accused France of “crimes” and “human rights violations” in overseas territories including New Caledonia in the South Pacific, where 13 people have been killed this year in protests that broke out in May over a contested voting reform.

“President Aliyev’s words against France and Europe as the COP29 opened in Baku are unacceptable,” Pannier-Runacher told the French Senate.

Azerbaijan’s leader was using “the fight against climate change for a shameful personal agenda”, she added.

Aliyev had accused Paris of holding Corsica and other island territories ‘under colonial yoke’

Aliyev had earlier charged that “the regime of President (Emmanuel) Macron killed 13 people and wounded 169 … during legitimate protests by the Kanak people in New Caledonia”.

Violence broke out in mid-May in New Caledonia, northeast of Australia, over Paris’s plan for voting reforms that indigenous Kanak people fear would leave them in a permanent minority, crushing their chances of winning independence.

France sent thousands of troops and police to the archipelago, which is home to around 270,000 people and lies nearly 17,000 kilometres from Paris.

The reform has been abandoned by a new government since Macron called legislative elections in June.

But the extent of violence and damage was such that Prime Minister Michel Barnier last month announced the postponement of the territory’s local polls until the end of next year.

Colonial yoke

Aliyev accused France on Wednesday of holding Mediterranean island Corsica and Paris’s far-flung overseas island territories “under colonial yoke”.

Azerbaijan has played host to a group of pro-independence movements from French overseas territories in an apparent bid to needle Paris, which has long supported Baku’s arch-rival Armenia.

Aliyev’s latest attacks were “a flagrant violation of the code of conduct” that usually prevails at the landmark UN climate change conferences, Pannier-Runacher, the French minister, said.

“Direct attacks on our country, its institutions and its territories cannot be justified,” she added.

She also took aim at “Azerbaijan’s words in favour of fossil energy”.

‘Highest ambition’

On Tuesday, the Azerbaijani president had called oil and gas “a gift of the God” in his COP opening address.

President Aliyev’s strident remarks were “unworthy of the COP presidency”, Pannier-Runacher said.

She hoped instead to spotlight a “positive dynamic” at the conference in Azerbaijan, where Brazil and Britain announced new emission targets.

While President Macron and Premier Barnier backed Pannier-Runacher in not personally attending, “France’s negotiating teams will spare no effort, with my support from a distance … to protect the planet and our populations”, she added.

“We will continue to argue for the highest level of ambition in implementing the Paris Accord” of 2015, Pannier-Runacher said.

Published in Dawn, November 14th, 2024