Chad Says It Will Help UN Darfur Peace Moves

N'DJAMENA - Chad promised on Friday to back United Nations moves to end the conflict in Sudan's Darfur region by allowing international peacekeepers on its own soil, and even offered to host preliminary peace talks.

Chad President Idriss Deby made the commitment to U.N. Secretary-General Ban Ki-moon, who was in the vast, landlocked country bordering Darfur on a tour to canvass support for the U.N.'s peace drive for the western Sudanese region.

After Ban met Sudanese leaders in Khartoum on Thursday, he announced Sudan would start talks in Libya on Oct. 27 with rebel groups to try to forge a peace in Darfur, where political and ethnic violence has raged since 2003.

"We've agreed to contribute all we can to this effort to resolve the Sudanese conflict," Deby told reporters. A communique issued later said Chad had pledged to "facilitate the rapid deployment" of a European Union force near Darfur.

Deby said Chad was offering to host a preliminary meeting for the Darfur rebel leaders to smooth out obstacles and difficulties prior to the October talks in Libya.

At a news conference, Chadian Foreign Minister Ahmat Allam-Mi said: "We have experience of dealing with the Sudanese rebels, we know them personally. If the parties want it ... we can play a role."

Ban indicated support for the proposed meeting. "I am convinced that it can happen before we begin the formal meeting, and we will work toward that," he said.

A senior U.N. official said later: "It's an offer and we will see if it works out. We have to discuss it with the parties. No date is set."

The Darfur conflict has killed some 200,000 people and made over 2 million homeless, international experts say, and spilled refugees, rebels and militiamen over the border into Chad, spawning ethnic violence and a humanitarian crisis.

The planned EU peacekeeping force in eastern Chad and northeastern Central African Republic will complement plans for a 26,000-strong joint U.N.-African Union peacekeeping force for Darfur itself. Up to 3,000 EU troops will try to contain the spread of violence.

Previous talks on Darfur held in Nigeria produced a 2006 peace deal between the government and one Darfur rebel group that failed to end bloodshed despite the deployment of 7,000 African Union peacekeepers.


EMERGENCY APPEAL

As Ban arrived in N'Djamena, the U.N. World Food Programme appealed for emergency funds to feed more than 400,000 refugees and displaced civilians in eastern Chad who have fled the regional violence. More than half are refugees from Darfur.

U.N. agencies are caring for the refugees in teeming camps, and the WFP said $81 million was required to feed the needy in 2008.

"Donors need to act now to avoid the risk of any delay in providing food for hundreds of thousands of people who entirely depend on WFP for their daily survival," Felix Bamezon, WFP country director, said in a statement.

Jean-Marie Guehenno, head of the U.N. peacekeeping department, said 300 U.N. police instructors would train 850 Chadian police to help guard the refugee camps, while the planned EU military force would have a wider security role.

"The (EU) military is not focusing on the camps but the lines of communication are fragile. You have roaming bands that can really make up a threat," he told reporters on the flight from Khartoum.

"So the main purpose of the EU force would be to ensure the area's security and obviously to protect civilians in imminent danger."

He said the EU force would not patrol the border itself because Chad was concerned there should be no overlap with a Chad-Sudan-Libya border monitoring accord.

Guehenno said he would go to Brussels on Monday to talk to the EU, which is expected to give the final go-ahead for the planned Chad force on Sept. 17.