Chad asked to prove Sudan role in rebel attacks

April 19, 2006 (N’DJAMENA) — The international community is seeking solid proof from Chad to back its accusations that neighbouring Sudan is behind rebel attempts to overthrow President Idriss Deby, diplomats said on Wednesday.

Insurgents fighting to end Deby’s rule over the landlocked central African oil producer launched a lightning assault on the capital last week, racing across the desert in pick-up trucks from the eastern border region with Sudan.

Deby has accused Sudan of attacking his country in a drive to export what he called Khartoum’s fundamentalist system to sub-Saharan Africa. His government says it has abundant proof of Sudan’s involvement. Khartoum denies the charges.

“While Chad is making accusations, the Sudanese are defending themselves,” said African Union Commission Chairman Alpha Oumar Konare, one of the continent’s top diplomats.

“So there is a need for a mission to establish the facts and, using them, make a condemnation,” he told a news conference in Congo’s capital Kinshasa. An AU mission is expected in Chad in the coming days.

Former colonial power France, which has more than 1,000 soldiers in Chad, says Deby was democratically elected and that its forces are defending “legitimacy and legality”, although it says they have not been involved in any fighting.

French planes have flown reconnaissance missions across the vast country in what officials say are efforts to get to the bottom of Chad’s accusations of Sudanese involvement.

But international condemnation of Sudan, particularly over the crisis in its Darfur region, has been far from unanimous.

Russia and China blocked U.N. sanctions on Monday against four Sudanese, including an air force general and a pro-Khartoum militia leader, held responsible for abuses there. The United States said it would force a public vote on the issue.

“IRREFUTABLE PROOF”

Chad says it has ample proof — ranging from circumstantial to “irrefutable” — that Sudan’s government equipped and armed the insurgents who launched the dawn assault on the capital last week following a series of attacks further east.

“There were Sudanese officials among the prisoners we took who had been directing the fighting,” Information Minister Hourmadji Moussa Doumgor said.

“The rebels arrived with 60 vehicles, with heavy weapons, fuel, logistics, all of it from Sudan. Do you think they could have done that without Sudanese support?” he said.

Foreign diplomats said many of those captured during the fighting appeared not to speak Chadian dialects, while residents said the insurgents had to ask the way to the presidential palace when they arrived and ended up attacking parliament.

“They spent ages attacking the biggest and emptiest building in N’Djamena,” said one diplomat. “No one was in parliament but they were shooting at it as if Deby was inside.”

Among the weapons seized and shown to journalists in N’Djamena after the fighting were Chinese-made equipment and munitions in Sudanese sugar sacks.

China, which has abstained from voting on every U.N. Security Council resolution critical of the Sudanese government over Darfur, is Sudan’s biggest foreign investor — mostly in oil — and has provided considerable military loans.

“There is no doubt that the rebels are backed by Khartoum, you only have to look at the weapons which are all Chinese-made. There are several big Chinese weapons factories in Khartoum,” said one independent analyst, who asked not to be named.

(Reuters)