Sudan and Chad seek to defuse border tensions

KHARTOUM, May 9 (AFP) — Consultations between Chad and Sudan were under way Sunday to defuse tensions after Ndjamena accused Khartoum of overflying its territory and fueling the ongoing conflict in the nearby Darfur region, Sudanese Foreign Minister Najeib al-Khair Abdel Wahab said.

“The Sudanese and Chadian governments have sufficient political will to defuse the tension in an objective and realistic manner,” Abdel Wahab told AFP.

He said his government would spare no effort to ensure that Chad’s territorial integrity “is intact and shall not be threatened by any force coming from Sudanese territories”.

The minister announced that Sudan’s main negotiator in Darfur peace talks, Investment Minister Sherif Ahmed Omar Badr, would fly to Ndjamena Monday to bring Khartoum’s message “in clear terms” to Chadian President Idriss Deby.

Chad railed at the weekend against what it said was a pair of Sudanese helicopters that overflew its territory and an incursion by Khartoum-backed militias who had to be forced back by its army.

“We are in a situation whereby we fear that our patience can have its limits,” acting defense minister Emmanuel Nadingar warned Saturday in the Chadian capital Ndjamena, lambasting Khartoum for its “belligerent behavior”.

International rights groups accuse the Khartoum government of backing ethnic Arab militias which have led rampages in the non-Arab Darfur region, sparking a mass exodus of locals and fuelling a major humanitarian crisis there.

The United Nations blames Khartoum for running a deliberate campaign of ethnic cleansing in Darfur, where more than a million people have been driven from their homes and at least 10,000 killed since the outbreak of fighting in February last year.

Abdel Wahab said the negotiator, Badr, was currently in Ethiopia for consultations with the African Union on ways to “make sustainable” a ceasefire agreement signed April 8 by the Sudanese government and Darfur rebels in Ndjamena.

The Sudanese diplomatic chief has previously argued that the root cause of the fighting in Darfur is not the actions of the Arab militias but a conflict over resources in the increasingly arid region.