Libya’s Gadhafi seals Chad-Sudan reconciliation

July 3, 2006 (TRIPOLI, Libya) — Muammar Gadhafi has sponsored a reconciliation agreement between Sudan and Chad as part of the Libyan leader’s efforts to iron out conflicts in Africa.

Libyan news agency JANA said Gadhafi sponsored a tripartite meeting with Sudan’s President Omar al-Bashir and Chad’s Idriss Debby in the Gambian capital, Banjul, during which the reconciliation was sealed early Monday.

It said the reasons for the conflicts between Sudan and neighboring Chad were reviewed and debated, and at the end Bashir and Debby agreed to set up a joint committee to prepare arrangements for normalizing relations between their two countries.

The two presidents reaffirmed their commitment to the “Tripoli Declaration,” which they signed in February in a summit meeting hosted by Gadhafi during which they agreed to normalize diplomatic relations and ban the presence of rebels using their territories to launch attacks against each others’ countries.

JANA reported that “Gadhafi expressed to the Sudanese and Chadian presidents his appreciation of their responsible attitude and positive response to his reconciliation initiative and their keenness to preserve peace, security and stability in the black continent.”

The conflict between Sudan and Chad broke out last December, when Chad declared that it was in a state of war with Khartoum following an attack by Sudanese rebels against a Chadian village on the shared eastern border.

Gadhafi announced an initiative to settle the conflict in January, including shifting 3,000 African Union troops deployed in Darfur to the border between Chad and Sudan to monitor possible violations.

(UPI)