Negotiations on New Caledonia's future won't begin until after April, after a landmark referendum on independence from France - but the process remains controversial.
French overseas minister Sebastien Lecornu said negotiations about New Caledonia's institutional future won't begin before next year's French elections - the first round of which is scheduled for April.
In three referendums held under the Noumea Accord a majority of New Caledonians voted against independence from France.
But the pro-independence camp boycotted the latest of the referendums, which was held on Sunday, and has refused to recognise the outcome as legitimate.
Sebastien Lecornu Photo: AFP or licensors
The pro-independence parties had made repeated pleas to France for the vote to be held next year, because of the impact of the pandemic on the Kanak population,
Speaking to the French National Assembly's law commission from Noumea, Lecornu accepted the stance of the pro-independence camp which ruled out talks with Paris before the end of the term of President Emmanuel Macron.
The vote ended the Noumea Accord, but its provisions leave the current institutions in place until a post-Accord arrangement has been adopted.
Lecornu had set June 2023 as the target date for a new statute, which would then be put to a vote in New Caledonia.
Senior French official Alain Christnacht, an architect of the Noumea Accord, has warned that shortening the negotiation period imperils the chance of meeting the deadline.
Lecornu, who arrived in Noumea on the eve of the vote, plans to meet the New Caledonian government and congress this week.
He said there is an urgent need to discuss three areas of immediate concern; health measures to fight the pandemic, difficulties facing the vital nickel sector, and the deficits in public finances.
Flosse condemns third referendum timing
French Polynesia's veteran politician Gaston Flosse said president Macron was wrong in rejecting the pleas to postpone last Sunday's referendum.
Flosse said 30 years had been spent on the decolonisation process, and Paris could have waited another six or eight months.
He said he feared the problems would now not be resolved around the negotiating table, suggesting the territory could return to the troubles of the 1980s.
France to raise New Caledonian independence at the UN
Lecornu said he will go to New York early next year to discuss the issue with the United Nations.
New Caledonia has been on the UN decolonisation list since 1986.
In the lead-up to the third referendum, the president of New Caledonia's congress Roch Wamytan went to the UN to claim that the plebiscite was illegitimate because the Kanak people boycotted it.
He said without the Kanak people taking part, the third referendum would be invalid.
The Kanaks are the only ethnic group within France to be recognised as a separate people from the French people.
The Secretariat of the Melanesian Spearhead Group said it firmly supports a call by New Caledonia's FLNKS for the UN to declare Sunday's result null and void.