Chad rebels call congress to name leadership

N’DJAMENA, June 23 (Reuters) – Chadian rebels seeking to topple President Idriss Deby have called a meeting to elect a new leadership following discontent over the way their coalition was being run, their spokesman said on Friday.

Albissaty Saleh Allazam, spokesman for the United Front for Democratic Change (FUC) which launched an assault on N’Djamena in April, said the group would hold a congress at the end of this month to restructure its organisation.

“We have talked in several meetings about the need to form an executive body, but that has not happened,” Allazam told RFI radio, the international arm of France’s state broadcaster.
“We have called a general meeting, a mini-congress.”

Allazam denied the group was jettisoning its leader Mahamat Nour, who Deby’s government accuses of acting on behalf of Sudan.

The rebels accuse Deby of dictatorial rule in the oil-producing central African state.

Allazam’s remarks came after an opposition Web site carried a statement which said it came from FUC Vice-President Hassane Saleh Aldjinedi, announcing the dissolution of the group.

It was not immediately possible to verify the origin of the statement, which blamed the FUC’s break-up on what it said was erratic and authoritarian leadership by Nour.

Unconfirmed reports say that Nour relations with the allied factions are troubled since the failure of FUC attack on N’djamena last April. Also Nour’s ties with Khartoum seem chilled by this failure.

The rebels have stepped up their attacks this year and launched an April 13 attack on the capital in which hundreds of people were killed. It came just three weeks before a May 3 election that handed Deby a fresh five-year term in the arid, landlocked nation.

(ST/Reuters)

To read the above-mentioned press release and more go to the French language http://www.alwihdainfo.com/