The United Nations intends to send a mission to Chad next week in an attempt to allay government concerns about a proposed UN peacekeeping operation in Sudan’s western neighbour, UN officials said on Friday.
The group of about 10 experts leaves during the weekend to begin talks with Chadian leaders in the capital, Ndjamena, on Tuesday and may stay a few weeks, said one senior official, speaking on condition of anonymity.
In February, UN Secretary General Ban Ki-Moon recommended peacekeeping operations up to 11 000 soldiers and police in Chad and the Central African Republic to staunch the violence and spill-over from the Darfur conflict in western Sudan.
Chadian President Idriss Déby, who had sought international help for months, was reluctant to approve troops rather than just civilian police, arguing that Chad was chosen because Sudan has refused UN peacekeepers, Ban said.
Both countries have supported each other’s rebels.
But the UN contends that police cannot operate without military protection. ”We will listen to their concerns in hopes of reaching a formula where our people would be sufficiently protected,” the senior official said.
”There is an assessment team that is going out there,” US Ambassador Zalmay Khalilzad, this month’s council president, told reporters. He said the council expected an update by the end of May, although the team may not return by then.
In Darfur, at least 200 000 people have died and two million have been chased from their homes since the conflict flared in 2003 when African rebels took up arms against the Arab-dominated Khartoum government in a fight over resources.
Eastern Chad has 234 000 Sudanese refugees and 120 000 of its own citizens chased from villages along the border with Sudan’s Darfur, mainly by government-armed guerrillas.
A Security Council mission in June 2006 visited camps in Chad, where the UN refugee agency said recruiters were prevalent in trying to engage men and boys to fight.
The leader of the mission, British Ambassador Emyr Jones Parry, said members ”felt very guilty that the UN actually hasn’t been able to do more to protect the people in those camps.”
France, the former colonial power, has an air force base of about 3 000 in Chad. — Reuters