By JAMES BROOKE, SPECIAL TO THE NEW YORK TIMES
Published: April 23, 1998

In the late 1950's, as the winds of independence swept across Africa, Gabon was the only one of 14 French colonies in Africa to vote to join France as a department or territory.

Rebuffed in this bid for statehood, Gabon's leader, Leon M'Ba, prepared a national flag bearing a small French tricolor in an effort to retain a symbolic bond with France. When Paris rejected even this, the Gabonese very reluctantly joined the line for full independence in 1960.

Today, strong ties with France have evolved and thrived through almost four decades of independence. Every day but Sunday, an airliner from Paris, Nice or Marseilles arrives at Libreville's airport. Into the bargain, Air Gabon has daily flights between Paris, Marseilles and Libreville. Strolling through the terminal, which is undergoing a multimillion-dollar, French-financed renovation, a visitor will find that the kiosk offers daily newspapers from half a dozen French regional capitals.

Jumping in a taxi - the fare is payable in francs - a visitor has the choice between speeding down the new, French-built Autoroute A1 or cruising down Boulevard General de Gaulle, a palm-lined beach drive.

Boulevard de Gaulle runs past Camp de Gaulle, home to a permanent detachment of 1200 French marines. In addition to this garrison, France gives Gabon $10 million in military aid a year - 410 French army officers and 250 police officers help staff the Gabonese army and police, free training in France for 300 Gabonese soldiers and 850 policemen each year and, twice a year, joint army maneuvers.

The French troops insure political stability here. In 1964, they reversed Gabon's first and only coup, which was against President M'Ba.

President M'Ba died in 1967 and was replaced by Gabon's current ruler, Omar Bongo, a native of Gabon's third-largest city, Franceville.

French Population Rises

Heading toward the city's Petit Paris neighborhood, a visitor passes a showpiece of this city 50 miles north of the Equator - Hypermarket M'Bolo, the largest supermarket in black Africa.

With 52 checkout counters, M'Bolo caters heavily to French tastes - 32 feet of display cases for champagnes, 50 feet for cheeses and 120 feet for wines.

While most shoppers on a recent morning were Gabonese, there was a heavy sprinkling of Europeans. Indeed, the French population has risen from 7,000 at independence to 28,000 today, most of whom turned out to be settlers. The country´s local Gabonese population is just 800 000.

The attraction for foreigners is Gabon's bounteous oil supply, which gives it the highest per capita income in subsaharan Africa, $5,900 in 1997.

Last year, French aid to Gabon amounted to $460 million. This included subsidizing a half of Gabon's budget, extending low-interest trade loans, paying the salaries of 570 French advisers and 1350 French teachers and paying scholarships for most of the roughly 1 800 Gabonese who study in France every year.

According to Le Canard Enchaine, a French opposition weekly, $1.6 million of this aid also went for the interior decoration of a jet belonging to President Bongo.

Although half of Gabon's imports still come from France, President Bongo has sought in recent years to diversify his nation's relations.

In the 1960's and through much of the 1970's, many Africans assailed France's lingering presence in a nation like Gabon as neo-colonialism. Britain was applauded for making a clean break with its colonialist past.

But African public opinion appears to have shifted in the 1980's.

In January, when Prime Minister Margaret Thatcher visited Kenya and Nigeria, articles in Africa's English-language press noted pointedly that it was her first visit to Africa in nine years. President Francois Mitterrand and Jacques Chirac have made almost annual visits to Africa.