French Polynesia's president, Edouard Fritch, says he regrets that he wasn't invited to this week's UN Decolonisation Committee meeting in New York.
This comes as the territory's pro-independence leaders were at the meeting - just over a year after the UN put French Polynesia back on the list of territories to be decolonised.
Mr Fritch has told Tahiti-Infos that he and his supporters are totally opposed to it, saying French Polynesia is an autonomous country that is governed democratically with an assembly elected by the people.
He says he can see no point to move in a direction of independence or towards very broad autonomy like the Cook Islands.
Mr Fritch says it has to be said that the era of colonisation has passed and people choose their future in an autonomous way.
