Chad rivals return to N’Djamena after signing peace deal in Libya
Dec 25, 2006 (N’DJAMENA) — Chad’s President Idriss Deby Itno and rebel leader Mahamat Nour Abdelkerim have arrived in N’Djamena after signing a peace deal in Libya, a government source has said.
Nour, who once ran one of the strongest rebel groups opposed to Deby, was staying with his aides at a smart hotel after flying in from Tripoli overnight on the same plane as the president, the source said Monday.
The peace accord, signed after talks arranged by Libyan leader Muammar Gadhafi, provides for a ceasefire, an amnesty for the rebels and a place for them in government, with the release of prisoners by both sides, participants in the Tripoli meeting said.
Chadian government sources, asking not to be named, said Nour’s force of an estimated 600 men with their 60 vehicles were currently based at Guereda, a town in the east of Chad under government control about 30 kilometres (20 miles) from the border with Sudan.
Minister of Infrastructure Adoum Younousmi, who was a signatory of the accord, told AFP that Nour’s force in all totalled between 3,000 and 4,000 men, some of whom would be integrated into the Chadian army.
“The accord provides for them to renounce armed struggle and join the democratic process. Mahamat Nour and all the military men who so wish will join the army in line with military regulations,” Younousmi said. “The integration process should be finished in three months.”
The FUC, set up in December 2005, launched a lightning offensive on April 13 from the east of Chad that advanced as far as the outskirts of the capital N’Djamena, to be driven back by government forces.
Since then, the group has split up into several rival factions, and is no longer seen as so powerful militarily, though other movements have stepped up their activity in eastern Chad and earlier this month clashed with government forces commanded directly by Deby, who set up base in an eastern town.
Under the Tripoli accord, a follow-up committee will be set up with Libya’s help to implement the deal with Nour, which Deby called “a big gift for the Chadian people” that would pave the way towards stability.
OTHER REBEL FORCES SAY NOT CONCERNED
One of the current rebel leaders, Timane Erdimi, dismissed the significance of the deal with Nour’s FUC, some of whose men went off to join a coalition led by the Rally of Democratic Forces (RAFD) headed by Erdimi and his twin brother Tom.
“This accord means nothing to us. We began this struggle without Mahamat Nour and we shall finish it without Mahamat Nour,” Erdimi told AFP, reached by telephone. “He represents nothing today.”
Deby’s government is also up against the Union of Forces for Democracy and Development (UFDD), led by former defence minister Mahamat Nouri, and the Chadian National Concord movement led by Hassan Saleh al-Djinedi.
The governments of Chad and the neighbouring Central African Republic accuse Sudan of backing different insurgent groups that launched attacks in the two countries from late October, while Chadian villagers have been prey to brutal attacks by Arab militias like those in Sudan’s Darfur region across the border.
Gadhafi hosted a mini-summit in Tripoli last month in a bid to ease tensions between Chad and Sudan, which have accused each other of attempts at destabilization.
UN agencies and non-governmental organisations have been forced by strife to cut back their personnel and operations in eastern Chad, where about 232,000 Sudanese refugees from Darfur live in camps and some 90,000 Chadian villagers have been displaced by clashes.
Early in December, Chad’s army clashed separately with the UFDD and the RAFD and then heavily fought both, chasing them across the border into Darfur. An anonymous source close to the government said Monday that “it’s men like Mahamat Nouri who are a real danger to the goverment today”.
(AFP)