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Chad Urges World To Make Sudan 'See Reason' On Darfur
May 14, 2008
Chad's foreign minister risked alienating his country even further from Sudan on
Wednesday by urging the international community to arm-twist Khartoum into
resolving the Darfur crisis.
Sudan severed diplomatic ties with Chad on Sunday, accusing Ndjamena of backing
a rebel assault on the Sudanese capital at the weekend. Chad closed its border
the following day, ramping up tensions between the volatile neighbours.
Relations have been tense between the two countries since 2003 when war broke
out in Darfur, sending hundreds of thousands of desperate refugees fleeing
across the Chadian border.
It was the Darfur issue that Foreign Minister Moussa Faki, a former prime
minister and key figure in Chad's new unity government, brought up on Wednesday.
He told AFP the time had come for the world to "make (Sudan) see reason," over
its war-torn province and to accelerate the implementation of a joint United
Nations-African Union peacekeeping mission.
"The hybrid force must be deployed," Faki said. "We have the impression that
nothing has progressed, whereas the consequences have been felt way beyond the
original theatre (of operations)."
Darfur has been devastated by civil war since 2003, but the 26,000-strong force
is not yet fully manned because of a row over non-African contingents, with
Sudan insisting that African options must be explored fully first.
A European Union peacekeeping force in Chad and the Central African Republic has
as its primary objective the protection of refugees from Darfur.
Faki defended Chad against Sudan's accusations it had backed last Saturday's
attack on Khartoum, saying his country had enough problems trying to control its
own borders.
Chad has suffered "several attacks emanating from Sudan," he said, adding that
Ndjamena was hardly going to "set off on an adventure more than 3,000 kilometres
(almost 2,000 miles) away to attack Omdurman."
Justice and Equality Movement rebels fought government forces on Saturday in
Khartoum's twin city of Omdurman, which lies just across the Nile from the
capital, prompting an indefinite curfew in the normally bustling metropolis.
More than 200 people were killed in that assault and other clashes outside the
city over three days, as the rebel force headed from the remote west to Omdurman
in at least 150 vehicles. The dead included 97 soldiers.
Sudan and Chad have traded accusations in recent years of supporting rebel
groups seeking to destabilise their respective regimes.
They broke off relations for four months in 2006 after Chadian President Idriss
Deby accused Sudan of arming the rebels who launched an earlier coup attempt
that year.
His government on Monday froze the activities of a Sudanese bank operating in
Chad, banned all financial transactions between the two countries, and said it
was designating Libya to represent its interests in Sudan.
It also banned Sudanese music from being played.
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Source: The Associated Press
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