Contact group on Chad-Sudan relations to meet next Saturday
February 22, 2009 (KHARTOUM) — The contact group tasked with the normalization of Sudan Chad relations will hold its seventh meeting in the Sudanese capital the next Saturday after being delayed for two weeks.
Sudan and Chad signed a non-aggression pact in March 2008 on the sidelines of a meeting of the Islamic Conference Organization. The two countries pledged to restore and normalize ties and also committed themselves to stop any support to rebel movements and agreed to deploy a joint force on the joint border to monitor rebels’s movement.
The parties also agreed to form a group of contact charged with the follow-up of the deal implementation. The members of this group are Eritrea, Congo (Brazzaville), Gabon, Libya, Senegal, as well as Representatives of the Organization of the Islamic Conference (OIC) and number of observers.
Ali Sadiq, the spokesperson of the Foreign Ministry told reporters on Sunday that the meeting would approve a report of the military and security experts, which was held in Tripoli recently.
He added that the meeting is expected to endorse a draft agreement on the deployment of the joint monitoring force that to be deployed on the Sudan-Chad border and another similar draft agreement on the organization and the work of the monitoring force.
The monitoring force would be composed of 1,000 Chadian soldiers and 1,000 Sudanese soldiers besides Senegalese and Congolese troops. Libya has pledged a total of 2 million U.S. dollars to finance the operations.
The force had to be deployed since Last January.
The Qatari Emir said yesterday after talks held in Khartoum with the Sudanese president on Darfur peace process he would visit Chad soon in order to accelerate the normalization of bilateral relations between the two countries.
(ST)