United Nations Security Council envoys will ask Chad’s president to seek reconciliation with neighbour Sudan after rebel attacks this year that both sides blame on each other, France’s UN envoy said on Friday.
On the sixth day of a 10-day tour of African conflict spots, the council ambassadors visited refugee camps in eastern Chad on Friday prior to a planned meeting with Chadian President Idriss Déby Itno in the capital, Ndjamena.
Sudan broke diplomatic relations with Chad last month after accusing Déby’s government of arming and directing a May 10 raid against Khartoum by rebels from the western Sudanese region of Darfur. Chad denies the charge and accuses Khartoum of backing anti-Déby rebels who attacked the Chadian capital in February.
France’s UN ambassador, Jean-Maurice Ripert, said the Security Council delegation’s message to the Chadian leader would be ”to plead like we have done in Khartoum in favour of reconciliation between Chad and Sudan”.
The UN council envoys met Sudan President Omar Hassan al-Bashir on Thursday and asked him to end the enmity with Chad, which is sheltering more than 200 000 Sudanese refugees who have fled over the border from the five-year conflict in Darfur.
”We will explain to the Chadian authorities that [this is] the time not to support rebel groups anywhere in the region, but to talk and to look towards cooperation,” Ripert said.
He added the Security Council ambassadors would ask Déby to respect the commitments he and Bashir made in a non-aggression pact signed in the Senegalese capital Dakar in mid-March and to cooperate with mediation efforts by the African Union.
In the last two years, Chad and Sudan have come close to all-out war over the question of support for rebels hostile to each other’s governments. The Sudanese and Chadian insurgents come from tribes living on both sides of the Darfur frontier.
Ripert said the UN envoys would also discuss with Déby the humanitarian situation in eastern Chad, where a European Union military force has been deployed this year to protect Sudanese refugees and displaced Chadian civilians.
‘Policies of destabilisation’
In a speech to the 15 UN Security Council diplomats in Khartoum late on Thursday, Bashir repeated Sudan’s accusation of Chadian involvement in last month’s attack on Khartoum by Darfuri Justice and Equality Movement (JEM) rebels.
”The Chadian aggression and most unfriendly policies of destabilisation have shown to the entire world the extent of its dangerous interference in the internal affairs of our country,” the Sudanese leader said.
”If left unchecked, the Chadian government policies have the effect of jeopardising the international community’s efforts to find a durable peace and stability in Darfur,” he added.
Sudan UN ambassador Abdalmahmoud Abdalhaleem urged the council envoys to warn Chad’s Déby that Sudan might retaliate if there was a repeat of the May 10 attack against Khartoum.
”Tell him that Sudan and Chad is one family … I can quarrel with you but not come in your bedroom and sleep on your bed; tell him ‘you will pay dearly if you do it again’,” he said.
The UN Security Council ambassadors were due to visit UN-run camps at Goz Beida, south of Abeche, which are sheltering both Sudanese refugees from Darfur and also Chadian civilians displaced by violence in their own country. — Reuters