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US envoy asks Chad for permission to visit Darfur rebels

Jan 19, 2007 (N’DJAMENA) — A U.S. envoy wants to travel to eastern Chad to try to press Darfur rebel factions to work together for peace.

unidentified_SLA_rebel.jpgAfter a meeting Thursday with Chadian President Idriss Deby, U.S. envoy Anthony Natsios, special White House envoy to Sudan, said he had come at the request of Sudan’s president to seek Deby’s permission to visit eastern Chad to meet with rebels from Sudan’s Darfur.

The governments of both Chad and Sudan accuse one another of supporting each other’s rebels. Each side denies the charges.

Natsios said he wanted to encourage the various rebel faction to forge a unified position in negotiations with the Sudanese government. Rivalries among the rebel groups have added to the difficulties of resolving the Darfur conflict.

After years of low-level conflict, a full-scale insurgency against what rebels called neglect by Sudan’s Arab-dominated central government erupted in Darfur in February 2003. Since then, violence has claimed at least 200,000 lives and forced 2.5 million people from their homes.

The instability sparked by Darfur has exacerbated rebellions in Chad and Central African Republic. In Chad, insurgents bent on toppling Deby have established bases in Darfur.

The Chadian rebels this week seized Ade, a town on the Sudanese border, according to reports from both the rebels and the government.

In addition to violence blamed on Chadian rebels, eastern Chad has in recent months seen deadly clashes between ethnic Arab and ethnic African Chadians, mirroring ethnic violence in Darfur. And Sudan’s Arab Janjaweed militias have been chasing refugees from Darfur into Chad – and there are reports they have attacked ethnic African Chadians as well.

A U.N. team was headed to central Africa over the weekend to explore the possibility of deploying a U.N. force in Chad and the Central African Republic to protect civilians. Hundreds of thousands of displaced people and refugees are in camps in Sudan, Chad and the Central African Republic.

The Sudanese government has resisted international pressure to allow 20,000 U.N. peacekeepers to replace a much smaller African Union force in Darfur, but Chad and the Central African Republic favor a U.N. presence in principle.

(AP)

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