Chad, Sudan can resolve differences – Deby

Aug 8, 2006 (N’DJAMENA) — President Idriss Deby had a warm hug Tuesday for the Sudanese president with whom he has repeatedly clashed, welcoming him as a guest at his inauguration for a third term.

Deby said Chad and Sudan can resolve their differences using “African wisdom.”

Sudan’s Omar al-Bashir was making the second high-level Sudanese visit to Chad since the two nations broke diplomatic ties in April.

Chad has accused Sudan of involvement in a rebellion in eastern Chad. Sudan has in turn accused Chad of harboring Sudanese rebels fighting in its Darfur region, which borders Chad.

“The misunderstanding has never broken our will to resolve our differences using African wisdom,” Deby said in his speech Tuesday.

Al-Bashir was among 10 African leaders in Chad for the inauguration ceremony. They included Libya’s Moammar Gadhafi and Senegal’s President Abdoulaye Wade, who both have tried to mediate in the Chad-Sudan conflict. Wade has called Deby and al-Bashir to a meeting in Senegal Wednesday, and last week suggested they accept international observers along their border.

In his speech, Deby said he wanted a peaceful Chad, adding that was why he had initiated talks with Chadian opposition parties and wanted all political parties to take part in Chadian affairs. The main opposition has so far rejected his overture, saying it didn’t go far enough. He has limited participants to recognized political parties and the agenda to how best to conduct elections.

Chad needs “a government that governs and an opposition that plays its role of acting a check,” Deby said Tuesday, though he chided the opposition for seeking foreign support.

Deby won elections in May that the main opposition parties boycotted because they claimed they had been rigged.

Deby, who first took power at the head of his own rebel army in 1990, faces a rebellion that has been brewing since October and has been bolstered by his relatives and by scores of army defectors. The competition for power in Chad has become more intense since the country began exporting oil in 2004.

(AP/ST)