Chad proposes to move refugees far from Sudan border

Nov 29, 2006 (N’DJAMENA) — Chad proposed on Wednesday moving more than 200,000 Sudanese refugees far away from its violent eastern border with Sudan, saying rebel attacks from its neighbour had placed it “in a state of war”.

In a speech to ambassadors, Foreign Minister Ahmat Allam-Mi repeated accusations by Chad that the Sudanese government was backing rebels seeking to end President Idriss Deby’s rule in the landlocked central African state.

“Chad is in a state of war,” he said. But he was careful to add N’Djamena was not declaring war on Sudan.

The minister also accused Saudi Arabia of being implicated in a weekend attack by anti-Deby rebels who briefly occupied a major eastern town, Abeche, that serves as the centre for international humanitarian operations in Chad.

“This new operation bears the mark of Saudi Arabia, or at least of certain circles close to the royal family which recruit mercenaries linked to the shadowy al Qaeda,” Allam-Mi said, without elaborating. Sudan has denied backing the rebels.

The U.N. refugee agency UNHCR runs camps in eastern Chad sheltering 218,000 Sudanese refugees who have fled fighting in Sudan’s western Darfur region, which has been torn by ethnic and political conflict since 2003.

Allam-Mi told the diplomats these camps in eastern Chad should be relocated in the coming weeks to new sites several hundred kilometres to the west.

“The government proposes to its partners, particularly the UNHCR, the localities of Salal, Koro-Toro and other places as new sites to receive these refugees,” he added. These locations are in arid and sparsely populated central Chad.

A spokeswoman for the UNHCR in Chad, Helene Caux, said the U.N. agency had received no formal proposal so far from the Chadian government for the relocation of the camps.

Allam-Mi said such a move would help protect the Sudanese refugees, who were threatened by cross-border violence spilling over from Darfur. This, along with local ethnic clashes, has killed several hundreds Chadian villagers in recent weeks.

“CIVIL WAR APPROACHING”

The minister said moving the camps away from the border would also protect Chad from accusations that it was allowing Darfur rebels fighting the Sudanese government to use the Chad refugee camps as bases for recruitment.

UNHCR’s Caux said the U.N. agency had already been looking at moving two of its 12 camps in eastern Chad further back from the volatile Sudan frontier.

Any new sites would have to be carefully considered for their viability, for example, their access to available water.

UNHCR also runs shelters for some 90,000 Chadian civilians who have been displaced by ethnic violence in their own country, including a wave of attacks by Arab raiders on horseback who have attacked and razed non-Arab eastern villages.

Allam-Mi told the diplomats Chad was seeking the active support and solidarity of the international community to “save it from a civil war which is approaching on the horizon”.

Humanitarian workers in Chad have been appealing for a strong U.N. peacekeeping force to be deployed in neighbouring Darfur to halt the conflict there and secure the border.

But Sudan is opposing the deployment of U.N. troops on its soil, saying this would be the equivalent of a colonial reconquest by the West.

(Reuters)