Sudan, Chad agree to boost border surveillance
Feb 22, 2007 (KHARTOUM) — Sudan and Chad agreed to revive a year-old agreement aimed at boosting security along their troubled border during recent talks in Libya, a Sudanese official said Thursday.
“The summit decided to go back to the February 2006 Tripoli agreement,” Minister of State for Foreign Affairs Sammani al-Wassila told the official SUNA news agency.
Sudanese President Omar al-Beshir returned Wednesday from two days of talks with regional leaders in Tripoli aimed at rallying holdout Darfur rebel groups to a peace agreement.
Wassila said Sudanese officials stayed behind in Libya to work with Chadian counterparts on a timetable for the implementation of the border deal, which provides for the creation of surveillance posts and joint military units.
“An improvement in Sudanese-Chadian relations is essential to any solution in Darfur,” Wassila added.
The western Sudanese region of Darfur has been torn by four years of civil conflict pitting rebel factions against government forces and allied militias.
A peace agreement was signed in May 2006 by the government and one rebel group, but it failed to take hold and the violence has since spilled over into neighbouring Chad and the Central African Republic (CAR).
Relations between Sudan and Chad have been tense in recent months, with both sides trading accusations of support for each other’s armed opposition groups.
Sudan, Chad and the CAR signed an agreement last week on the sidelines of the France-Arica summit in Cannes to stop any form of support for each other’s rebels.
On Wednesday, UN chief Ban Ki-Moon recommended sending 11,000 soldiers to Chad and the CAR to protect civilian populations increasingly caught up in the spillover of violence from Darfur.
According to the United Nations, at least 200,000 people have died and more than two million fled their homes since the conflict started four years ago this month. Some sources say the death toll is much higher.
(AFP)