Chad's President Idriss Deby said on Thursday he had agreed in principle to let a European Union force into the east of his country to contain violence that has spread from neighbouring Sudan's Darfur region.

The United Nations says eastern Chad has some 230,000 refugees from Sudan, and that more than 170,000 of its own citizens have also been displaced as a result of the conflict, with over 700,000 more affected by violence in other ways.

"We have accepted it," Deby told reporters after a meeting with President Nicolas Sarkozy of France, one of the main proponents of a deployment to the area, where government forces have also been fighting Chadian rebels.

Deby said details of the plan were still being discussed, but that it was important that the international community send a contingent "to provide security for the refugees and displaced people and prevent incursions by Janjaweed militias". The violence in Darfur flared after mostly non-Arab rebels took up arms in 2003, accusing Sudan's central government of neglecting the remote, arid region. Khartoum mobilised Arab militias, called Janjaweed, to quell the revolt. International experts estimate that some 200,000 people have died in Darfur in what the United States has termed genocide. Sudan denies supporting the Janjaweed, and puts the death toll at around 9,000.

In June, Deby rebuffed a French proposal to set up a humanitarian corridor through Chad's violent east to get help to Darfur's refugees.

He also originally resisted the idea of an international force, but U.N. peacekeeping chief Jean-Marie Guehenno said on Tuesday Deby had agreed to it in principle.

Guehenno said he wanted the EU to deploy highly mobile troops by the end of 2007, for about a year, to protect a zone 900 km long by 200-400 km wide (560 by 125-250 miles).

Sarkozy's spokesman David Martinon told a weekly news conference that the plan, which includes a police element and a military component, was still "at the stage of consideration" on the EU side.

"At least there is a clear consensus within the European Union on the fact that eastern Chad must be stabilised and made secure, because it is one of the pillars of the stabilisation of the region," Martinon said.

France, Chad's former colonial ruler, has set up an airlift to deliver supplies to refugee camps near the border with Sudan.