Sudan denies helping Chad rebels
Dec 28, 2005 (KHARTOUM) — Sudan on Wednesday denied Chadian accusations it was supporting dissidents trying to oust President Idriss Deby and said an African Union summit would go ahead in Khartoum in January.
Chadian army dissidents launched two attacks against the Chadian border town of Adre last week and the Chadian government said they chased the rebel back into the neighboring Sudanese Darfur region, where they say the rebels have bases.
Deby on Tuesday said Sudan was helping the rebels prepare a fresh attack in the coming days.
“This is nonsense — he is just trying to draw attention away from the internal problems he is having,” said Sudan’s State Minister for Foreign Affairs al-Samani Wasiylah.
“This is a mutiny in the army, everyone knows that, and we don’t want to be involved in that,” he told Reuters.
Scores of Chadian army officers deserted Deby’s army earlier this year and regrouped in the Chad-Sudan border region, vowing to overthrow Deby. The rebels, who formed the rebel Rally for Democracy and Liberty, (RDL), say they have more than 4,000 troops in the area.
Deby on Tuesday met the Nigerian President Olusegun Obasanjo, the current chairman of the 53-member African Union, and said the pan-African body’s biannual summit should be moved from Khartoum in January.
“The African Union is the only one who can make a decision about this — there is nothing Chad can do about that,” said Wasiylah.
Chadian rebels deny any direct support from Sudan, although they say they did have training camps in Darfur in the 1990s.
Wasiylah said any military movements by Sudan or Chadian rebels would be noticed by a more than 6,000-strong AU force monitoring a shaky truce between Darfur rebels and the Sudanese army in Darfur.
“We already have enough problems in Darfur — we are not in a position to want to create more,” the Sudanese minister said.
Tens of thousands have been killed and more than 2 million herded into miserable camps in Sudan’s remote west after mostly non-Arab rebels took up arms almost three years ago accusing the central government of neglect.
The United States has accused Khartoum and its allied militias of genocide in Darfur, a charge the government denies. But the International Criminal Court is investigating alleged war crimes in the region.
There are concerns that any rebellion in Chad’s east would destabilize both countries and jeopardize Darfur peace efforts underway in the Nigerian capital Abuja.
The Chadian rebels told Reuters the attack on Adre was merely a tactical move and warned of a “decisive attack” within days. West Darfur’s main town near the border, el-Geneina, was full of armed troops and vehicles and remained under a curfew from 11 p.m. (2000 GMT).
(Reuters)