Chad rebel group backs out of 2003 peace accords

LIBREVILLE, Oct 19 (AFP) — The leader of a Chadian rebel movement Monday rejected the peace accord his group signed with the government in January 2003.

“The accords are finished,” said Mahamat Abbo Sileck, president of the National Resistance Army (ANR), speaking of the ceasefire that went into effect between his group and the regime of Chadian President Idriss Deby nearly two years ago.

Under the peace agreement the ANR had pledged to give up armed conflict while the government promised to offer qualified rebels jobs in the civil institutions, including the police force and customs service.

Sileck accused the president of failing to respect the majority of clauses in the accord.

Among abuses Sileck cited a recent constitutional change abolishing a limit on the number of presidential terms and the arrest in October of colonel Abdoulaye Sarwa, a former vice president of the ANR who had been integrated into the Chadian army after the accords.

The Chadian defence minister gave no motive for the colonel’s arrest.

The ANR was long dormant and eclipsed for several years by other rebel groups and warlord-run militias in the impoverished central African country, but re-emerged in 2002.

Sileck claimed on Monday to have several thousand men under his command, but the group’s real numbers are difficult to estimate.

Numerous Chadian armed groups have accused the Chadian government of ethnic cleansing and have called for Deby’s resignation.

Following independence from France in 1960, Chad endured three decades of ethnic warfare and invasions by Libya before a peace of a kind was restored in 1990, when Deby ousted dictator Hissene Habre, paving the way for a multi-party system of politics and elections.