Resolution of Sudan-Chad row passes through Darfur – Gadhafi
Feb 8, 2006 (TRIPOLI) — Libyan leader Muammar Gadhafi invited Chad and Sudan to resolve togather Darfur problem because it is the source of troubles between the two countries.
“What’s going on in Darfur is the cause of the tension in relations between Sudan and Chad,” Gadhafi said as he opened the summit also attended by the presidents of Burkina Faso, the Central African Republic and Congo.
“We must resolve this problem, we must not leave this summit until we have found a solution to this problem.”
African leaders started a mini-summit in Tripoli aimed at calming mounting border tensions between Chad and Sudan amid calls for the deployment of a UN force to the area.
Libyan leader Muammar Gadhafi told his counterparts that it was vital that they reach agreement among themselves if the continent was to be spared outside intervention.
He called on Chadian President Idriss Deby and Sudanese President Omar al-Beshir to continue their discussions with their African counterparts until they agreed a solution to the underlying source of the tension — the three-year-old civil war in Sudan’s western region of Darfur.
The Libyan leader said it was vital that the region’s leaders agree an “African solution” to the problem in order to “avoid foreign interference and keep the door firmly shut to outside machinations.”
“We have no need of UN peacekeepers — we have our own African forces — and we certainly have no need of the forces of our friend (British Prime Minister Tony) Blair, we can settle our problems ourselves,” Kadhafi said.
The UN Security Council last week approved contingency planning for UN peacekeepers to take over from an African Union force in Darfur.
But despite strong pressure from Western governments, including London, Khartoum has been implacably hostile to the deployment of UN troops.
The Tripoli talks come after Chad declared a “state of belligerence” with Sudan in December after a series of clashes on the Darfur border, in which each country accused the other of supporting rebel groups.
Gadhafi said the two neighbours had “crossed a red line” with their war of words and called for their desert border to be sealed to prevent rebel infiltration in either direction.
“Libya is ready to put 100,000 troops with 1,000 tanks and 100 aircraft at the disposal of the African Union to close the border, all our forces are at the disposal of the African Union,” he said.
Human Rights Watch on Sunday called for the deployment of an international force to protect Chadian villagers from what it described as almost daily cross-border raids by militias based in Sudan’s troubled Darfur region.
The New York-based group accused both Sudanese and Chadian militiamen based in Darfur of killing local people, burning villages and stealing cattle, some with Sudanese government support, including with helicopter gunships.
Darfur has since February 2003 been wracked by conflict pitting ethnic minority rebels against government troops and their Janjaweed militia allies.
Up to 300,000 people have died in the conflict and more than two million been displaced.
The United Nations meanwhile announced that donor governments would meet in Brussels next month to pledge funds for renwed peacekeeping efforts in Darfur.
AU HAS NO FUNDS BEYOND MARCH
“A pledging conference will be held in Brussels next March jointly by the UN and AU to raise funds from international donors for financing operations currently being conducted by the African Union mission in Darfur,” UN mission spokesperson Radhia Achouri told reporters in Khartoum.
She said the conference was originally scheduled for February 20 but was postponed without an exact date set.
The AU has said it has no funds to operate beyond March and is considering a handover of its Darfur mission to the United Nations.
Achouri said the security situation in Darfur “remains volatile with continued armed banditry.”
On February 2, armed tribesmen attacked three villages under rebel control in South Darfur state, “killing 10 people and wounding several others and torching one village,” she said.
(ST/AFP)