UN envoys urge Chad-Sudan reconciliation

Abeche, Chad: United Nations Security Council envoys will ask Chad's president to seek reconciliation with neighbour Sudan after rebel attacks this year which both sides blame on each other, France's UN envoy said on Friday.

On the sixth day of a ten-day tour of African conflict spots, the Council ambassadors visited refugee camps in eastern Chad yesterday prior to a planned meeting later with Chadian President Idriss Deby in the capital N'Djamena.

Sudan broke diplomatic relations with Chad last month after accusing Deby's government of arming and directing a May 10 raid against Khartoum by rebels from the western Sudanese region of Darfur. Chad denies the charge and accuses Khartoum of backing anti-Deby rebels who attacked the Chadian capital in February.

France's UN ambassador Jean-Maurice Ripert said the Security Council delegation's message to the Chadian leader would be "to plead in favour of reconciliation between Chad and Sudan".

The UN Council envoys met Sudan's President Omar Hassan Al Bashir on Thursday and asked him to end the enmity with Chad, which is sheltering more than 200,000 Sudanese refugees who have fled the conflict in Darfur.

"We will explain to the Chadian authorities that the time is not to support rebel groups ... but to talk and to look towards cooperation," Ripert said.

He added the Security Council ambassadors would ask Deby to respect the commitments he and Bashir made in a non-aggression pact signed in the Senegalese capital Dakar in mid-March.

In the last two years, Chad and Sudan have come close to all-out war over the question of support for rebels hostile to each other's governments.

The UN envoys would also discuss with Deby the humanitarian situation in eastern Chad.

In a speech to the 15 UN Security Council diplomats in Khartoum on Thursday, Bashir repeated Sudan's accusation of Chadian involvement in last month's rebel attack on Khartoum.