EU on Course for Chad Force to Aid Darfur Refugees

BRUSSELS - The European Union is on course to agree this month on the deployment of a military mission in Chad to help protect refugees from Sudan's Darfur conflict, the United Nations' peacekeeping chief said on Monday.

Jean-Marie Guehenno, a U.N. assistant secretary-general, briefed EU ambassadors on talks in Sudan, Chad and Libya and told reporters all regional players backed a European operation to protect civilians and help stabilise eastern Chad.

"Things are moving in the right direction," Guehenno said. He said he expected the U.N. Security Council to give a green light for a 3,000-strong EU mission in mid-month, clearing the way for a final decision by the 27-nation EU in late September.

The European deployment and support for a joint U.N.-African Union peacekeeing force in Darfur would help create the security conditions for renewed peace talks on the confict, due to begin in Libya on Oct. 27.

Guehenno said he was also looking to Europe to help provide armoured and transport helicopters for a joint U.N.-African Union peacekeeping force in Darfur, to deploy troops quickly and deter attacks on humanitarian workers and civilians.

"We don't have all the helicopters we need," he said, adding that Middle Eastern states had offered some armed helicopters.

Some 380,000 civilians are sheltering in eastern Chad. Most fled the civil war in Sudan but about 150,000 are local people forced from their homes as ethnic conflict has spilled over the border.

EU ambassadors heard a report from military planners last week calling the Chad operation useful and feasible. France, the former colonial power which maintains a military presence in Chad, is expected to provide the operation headquarters and about half the troops.

If all goes to plan, deployment would start at the end of the rainy season, in mid-October, and would be complete by year-end. The force strength would be at least 3,000, possibly rising to 4,000. It will initially have a mandate of 12 months.

General Henri Bentegeat, the French head of the EU's Military Committee, said the force would be big enough to deter potential attackers because it was made up of European troops, but he acknowledged helicopters could be a problem.

"The deployment of helicopters is almost always refused at the political level because of cost," Bentegeat told the Security and Defence Agenda think-tank.