Chad rebels willing to talk with government – spokesman

June 21, 2008 (NDJAMENA) — Chadian rebels abruptly changed tack Friday, calling for talks with the country’s leaders just days after a major battle with government troops.

On Monday, rebel spokesmen had been threatening to advance on the capital Ndjamena, as rebel forces had done in February, when they got as far as the presidential palace before being beaten back.

But on Tuesday, rebels clashed with government troops at Am Zoer, 80 kilometres (50 miles) northeast of Abeche in what both sides conceded was a major battle.

On Friday Ali Gueddei, the spokesman of the rebel alliance, told AFP the rebels were ready to talk.

“The National Alliance is willing to sit down around a round table for an inclusive dialogue during which all the problems that the Chadian people will be debated with a view to a just and lasting global solution,” said Gueddei.

“For the National Alliance it is about creating the objective favourable conditions for the advent of the rule of law guaranteeing fundamental liberties and multi-partyism,” he added.

In his statement, Gueddei described Tuesday’s clash as one of the “greatest battles of the inter-Chadian conflict in its intensity and its violence.”

Chad’s Army Chief of Staff General Touka Ramadan Kore said Wednesday his troops had won a decisive victory, killing more than 160 rebels and halting the week-long insurgency. The rebels said they lost only 27 men.

On Friday, Gueddei said he did not want to enter into President Idriss Deby’s “macabre game” of publicising the number of enemy dead. But he did say that Tuesday’s battle had been a graveyard for government troops.

There has been no report of any clashes since Tuesday’s battle and the army has continued to say that it has “annihilated” the rebels and their uprising.

As the rebels advanced westwards into the country, reporting every successful raid along the way in calls to the media, the government had consistently dismissed their claims that they meant to take the capital.

But on Monday, the US State Department announced that US embassy in Chad had temporarily moved non-essential staff to Cameroon and suspended visa services, as a precaution.

On Friday, Chad’s Communications Minister Mahamat Hissene said the rebel operation had been as much about communications as combat.

“It is a war of Thuraya (satellite telephone) as well as a war with Kalashnikovs,” he said.

For one French military source however, the rebels had mounted a successful communications operation.

“They filled the newspapers when the doubtless never had any intention of going to Ndjamena.”

In fact, they probably had half the number of all-terrain vehicles they had for their February offensive, he added.

(AFP)