Sir Paul McCartney has told Quebec separatists to "smoke the pipes of peace" amid controversy over his upcoming performance on Sunday to mark Quebec City's 400th anniversary, media said Friday.

The ex-Beatle is headlining the year-long celebrations, and some Quebecers lament his participation evokes painful memories of English hegemony, centuries after the French outpost was lost in battle to the British Crown.

"I think it's time to, you know, smoke the pipes of peace and to just put away your hatchets," McCartney said in an interview with public broadcaster CBC, as separatists and federalists bickered over the meaning of his show.

"I'm very friendly with the French people that I know. I know people of all nationalities. Hey, I'm friendly with German people. By that argument, I should never go to Germany or they should never come here (to Britain)," he said.

Daniel Gelinas, head of the anniversary organizing committee, said inviting McCartney to play was meant to spotlight the city's "two founding peoples: France and the UK."

But 35 local artists and politicians said in an open letter that the marquee spot for McCartney's show on the Plains of Abraham smacked of another British invasion.

On the fields outside the stone walls of the old city, General James Wolfe defeated General Louis-Joseph de Montcalm in 1759 to secure control of New France for the British.

"The presence of your English-language music on the most majestic part of Battlefields Park, as beautiful as it might be, can't help but bring back painful memories of our conquest," Quebec City painter and sculptor Luc Archambault said in his open letter to McCartney.

Archambault also asked the "international Anglo-Saxon idol" to show the same sensitivity to "the people of French Quebec" as the ex-Beatle has already shown to "the fate of seals." In 2006, McCartney and his then-wife Heather Mills visited the ice floes off Quebec's Magdalene Islands to protest the seal hunt.

Quebec Premier Jean Charest, a staunch federalist, countered: "Nobody criticizes (Quebec-born) Celine Dion for singing in Paris, Munich, England or elsewhere on the planet."

The Quebec City festival was organized to mark the day in 1608 when French explorer Samuel de Champlain crossed the Atlantic Ocean and headed up the Saint Lawrence River to establish Quebec City with 30 other men.

But from the start, partygoers have remained split over whether to toast Canada's beginnings or the cradle of French civilization in North America.

"Come on (Quebecers), love me baby," said McCartney, who is learning a bit of French to try to impress his fans in this bilingual country. A friend actually helped him write the French lyrics for the Beatles' 1965 Grammy Award-winning ballad "Michelle, Ma Belle."

Rooted in the early days of the fur trade, and once at the heart of a French empire that spanned from Acadia in easternmost Canada to Louisiana in the southern United States, Quebec City is now a bustling Canadian metropolis with a population of 700,000.

Its old quarter, perched atop a cliff that overlooks the point where the Saint Lawrence widens on its way to the open sea, remains the only fortified city north of Mexico and a UNESCO world heritage site.

Organizers are expecting some 200,000 people for McCartney's free concert, his only North American show this year. It will also be broadcast live on pay-per-view television.