FRANCE: Corsica and Caribbean new battlegrounds for candidates, says Lara Marlowe, in Paris
The leading candidates in the French presidential election took their campaigns to the islands at the weekend, two weeks before the first round of voting.
President Jacques Chirac made the nine-hour flight to the French overseas departments of Martinique, Guadeloupe and Guyana, where French West Indians showed an apathy similar to mainland France.
The Caribbean territories count half a million French voters, but scarcely 1,000 people came to hear the president speak in Matoury, Guyana.
At each stop, Mr Chirac said he wanted a "clean break" with the Jospin years of "institutional disorder".
He said that as prime minister, Mr Jospin had not prepared "a secure, promising future for overseas France" whereas he considered the far-flung departments to be "an extraordinary, indispensable advantage for France".
Mr Chirac also accused his rival of "loosening ties with the Republic", a reference to Mr Jospin's autonomy plan for Corsica.
In the Corsican capital Ajaccio, Mr Jospin said he would revise the French constitution to make it possible to hold a referendum on the future of Corsica.
He emphasised that the revision would apply to all French regions, but the proposal was immediately condemned by Mr Chirac and the former interior minister and presidential candidate Mr Jean-Pierre Chevengément.
In perhaps the biggest defeat of Mr Jospin's five years as prime minister, the Constitutional Council ruled in January that the Corsican assembly could not adapt French laws, as foreseen in the July 2000 Matignon Accords.
Mr Jospin defended the autonomy agreement, saying: "I honestly searched for a path for Corsica within France. . . I took political risks for it." Independence for the island of 200,000 "would not make sense and would only lead to economic and social regression", he added.
If the Corsicans want more autonomy, Mr Jospin said, they must stop violence.
There were 182 violent incidents in Corsica last year, most of them bombings which damaged property but claimed no victims.
Both candidates have been embarrassed by a French finance ministry report saying that it will be impossible to reach the EU goal of a near-balanced budget by 2004.
Mr Chirac and Mr Jospin promise to reduce taxes dramatically if elected, but the EU requirement - which they agreed to last month in Barcelona - would mean raising them.
In a setback for Mr Jospin, his approval rating in a poll published yesterday fell to 42 per cent, while Mr Chirac's rose to 47 per cent.