Refugee situation in Chad ‘urgent’: France’s Kouchner
June 9, 2007 (GOZ BEIDA) — French Foreign Minister Bernard Kouchner highlighted Saturday on the second leg of his African tour the “urgent” plight of hundreds of thousands of Sudanese refugees and displaced Chadians.
“We must talk about the situation facing displaced people and refugees in eastern Chad, it’s urgent,” he told journalists in Chad as he sought to review prospects for aiding victims of the Darfur conflict in neighbouring Sudan.
Kouchner reiterated his determination to find a political settlement to end four years of conflict in Darfur which the United States has called a “genocide”.
“We must have a political settlement and help practically to make it secure,” he said after visiting camps in eastern Chad packed with about 250,000 refugees from Darfur as well as 150,000 displaced Chadians.
He said he was determined to convince Chadian President Idriss Deby Itno, whom he will meet on Sunday in N’Djamena, to accept the presence of a force, preferably European, to secure the border areas.
“There must be an operation, doubtless French and I hope European, that will be proposed to the UN to do more here,” he said.
Chad ruled out back in February the deployment of a military force that the United Nations wanted to send to secure the borders with Darfur and the Central African Republic.
Kouchner, who founded the Doctors without Borders charity and was named foreign minister after Nicolas Sarkozy’s presidential election victory last month, has promised to make the conflict in Darfur his top priority.
At the G8 summit in Germany this week Sarkozy announced an international meeting on Darfur would be held in Paris on June 25 to try and work out a common strategy to resolve the crisis.
As well as meeting the Chadian president on Sunday, Kouchner will meet some of the 1,000 French troops stationed in the country.
The next day he will go on to Khartoum for talks with Sudan’s President Omar El Beshir.
The Group of Eight on Friday called for action against “the perpetrators of atrocities” in Darfur and said it would back UN action against the Sudanese government and rebel groups if the conflict is not ended.
US President George W. Bush had led calls for the summit of the industrialised powers to take a tough line against Sudan over the war and to support new UN sanctions.
According to UN figures, more than 200,000 people have been killed and more than two million displaced in four years of conflict in Darfur.
(AFP)