Chad withdraws from Darfur peace talks

April 16, 2006 (N’DJAMENA) — The Chadian delegation has withdrawn from the African Union-brokered peace talks on Sudan’s troubled Darfur region because of “Sudanese aggression”, a senior minister said Sunday.

“There is no point in being mediators when we are the victims of Sudanese aggression right up to N’Djamena,” Foreign Minister Ahmat Allami said. “We cannot be part of a conflict and guarantee its mediation.”

That view was echoed by the leader of the Chadian delegation at the talks in Nigeria, Habib Doutoum: “Following the rupture of diplomatic ties between Chad and Sudan, the Chadian government has decided to withdraw its mediation team from the AU-sponsored talks on Darfur.”

Chad has been a co-mediator in an effort to bring peace to Sudan’s Darfur region where three years of fighting between rebels and Khartoum-backed militias have left up to 300,000 people dead and two million displaced.

Chad broke off diplomatic relations with Sudan on Friday, accusing it of arming rebels who tried to storm the capital N’Djamena in an attack that killed 400 people.

President Idriss Deby has also threatened to expel some 200,000 refugees from Darfur now living in Chad in retaliation for the rebel offensive last Thursday.

Sudanese Foreign Minister Lam Akol Ajawin denied that Khartoum had backed the rebel offensive in the Chadian capital.

The AU spokesman at the Abuja peace talks, Noureddine Mezni, told AFP that the organisation was watching the situation closely and would react at the appropriate time to the withdrawal of the Chadian team.

(ST/AFP)