CHAD/SUDAN: Chad accused Sudan yesterday of trying to use the conflict in Darfur to destabilise the whole of central Africa and it demanded the international community intervene to prevent regional turmoil.
Three days after what Chad said was a Sudanese-backed attack on its capital, President Idriss Deby's government urged the United Nations to take control of Sudan's violence-torn Darfur region and sanction the Sudanese government.
Thursday's dawn raid on N'Djamena by rebel fighters who crossed the desert in pick-up trucks has focused world attention on the risk that the three-year-old political and ethnic conflict in Darfur could spread across central and west Africa.
N'Djamena was quiet yesterday but rebel officials told a French newspaper their forces were 25km (15 miles) from the capital. There was no independent confirmation of this.
Mr Deby, weakened by coup plots and desertions from his army, has said his government will stop sheltering more than 200,000 Darfur refugees unless the UN imposes its authority over the vast western Sudanese region by June 30th.
"The African Union has not been able to solve the Darfur crisis so far, or stop Sudan from threatening Chad," Chadian territorial administration minister Gen Mahamat Ali Abdallah Nassour said. "We believe Sudan has deliberately tried to turn Darfur into a kind of base from which to destabilise the whole of the sub-region, of which Chad is the first step." He demanded the international community "take its responsibility placing Darfur under a UN mandate".
Mr Deby, who is standing for re-election in a May 3rd presidential poll, cut diplomatic ties on Friday with Sudan, which vehemently denies helping the rebels seeking to oust him.
Chad was also withdrawing its representatives from African Union-sponsored peace talks on Darfur between the Sudanese government and rebels in Abuja, Nigeria, the Chadian government website reported.
But Chad would maintain its participation in the AU peacekeeping force in Darfur, it added.
Sudan's Suna news agency quoted Sudanese president Omar Hassan al-Bashir as saying "Sudan has no interest in any instability in Chad." He repeated Sudan's objection to the UN taking over the existing AU force in Darfur. Since the Darfur conflict erupted in 2003, tens of thousands of people have been killed and about two million displaced.
Mr Deby has accused Mr al-Bashir of committing "genocide" in Darfur by supporting local Arab militia against non-Arab groups who seek more autonomy from Khartoum.
These groups include the Zaghawa clan, from which Mr Deby comes, who live in both Chad and Sudan.