UN chief warns Chad fighting could spread

A government soldier poses in front of a China-made armored vehicle on Monday which reportedly was seized from rebels. Government forces repelled a rebel offensive last Friday after three hours of heavy fighting on the outskirts of the capital that left around 400 people dead. PHOTO: AFP

UN Kofi Annan warned on Monday that fighting in Chad, where rebels are trying to unseat the government, could have a domino effect in the region.

"If you have another escalation in Chad you risk destabilizing the whole region, not just Chad but also the Central African Republic, a sort of domino effect that we have seen in the Great Lakes region," Annan said of the conflicts in central Africa.

"We really should do everything to prevent it here," he told reporters after his monthly lunch with the 15 Security Council ambassadors.

Chadian Idriss Deby is seeking help in stopping rebels that he says are backed by neighboring Sudan.

Chad Monday accused Sudan of forming a new rebel army to attack the country, but withdrew a threat to expel 200,000 refugees from the strife-torn Sudanese region of Darfur.

It also gained tacit support from the US as one source suggested the Khartoum regime might have been involved in an attack on Chad and the US State Department issued a pointed warning to Sudan against any such move in the future.

Chadian Minister Ahmat Allami claimed the Sudanese government was "reforming a new army" to attack Chad, after the failure of an assault by insurgents on the capital N'Djamena last week which left around 400 people dead.

"Preparations are under way on the other side of the border. The Sudanese are reforming a new army... The Sudanese are preparing a new massacre," Allami said by telephone.

Deby's later released a statement accusing Khartoum of conscripting young people in Darfur to join the Chadian rebels and of sending them weapons to use in a new attack.

"According to corroborating sources, the Sudanese government is carrying out a forced recruitment of young people in Darfur to replace those who died during the latest combats," his office said in a statement.

Chad off diplomatic relations with Sudan last Friday, a day after the attack on N'Djamena by the rebel United Front for Change (FUC), which is seeking to topple Deby.

Washington short of officially endorsing Chad's allegations on Monday but a senior State Department official, who asked not to be named, told reporters, "I'm not going to wave you off that there was some involvement" by the regime of President Omar al-Beshir in Khartoum.

Chad threatened to retaliate by expelling the 200,000 refugees from the civil war in Sudan's western Darfur region now living in camps in Chad.

But on Monday, the UN's refugee chief Antonio Guterres said Deby had assured him that "refugees will not be refouled [forcibly returned]."

However, UN spokesman Stephane Dujarric said that UN food deliveries had been disrupted in five Chadian camps but completed in five others.

Annan he raised at the Security Council lunch reports of Sudan's involvement.

"If indeed the evidence is there that troops came from across the border of another country to attack one, the council cannot remain silent," he said.

He said he had spoken by telephone over the weekend to Deby, Congo Republic President and African Union Chairman Denis Sassou Nguesso, as well as US Secretary of State Condoleezza Rice and others "to see what can be done."

"I think it is important that the African Union, and all the countries in the region, and the international community, maintain the pressure on the two countries not to escalate," Annan said.

He said he still hoped for a peace agreement this month at talks in Abuja, Nigeria, between the Sudan government and Darfur rebels opposing it. But he acknowledged: "I have no certainty that there will be an agreement by the end of April."