Chad opens door to possible foreign military force / France's Kouchner in Sudan for Darfur talks
Four wire-service stories that update the earlier pair of AFP reports (updated both to reflect a newer version of the Reuters story on the source page, and to add the ones from AFP and the AP [which are all still newer]):
(The brief original version is also still available on AlertNet.)
President Idriss Deby appeared on Sunday to tone down Chad's resistance to deployment of an international military force on its volatile eastern border with Sudan's Darfur region.
Chad has previously favoured deploying only international police to its eastern region, where Chadian government forces have been fighting rebels, and [where] aid agencies are helping hundreds of thousands of Sudanese and local refugees living in camps.
After meeting new French Foreign Minister Bernard Kouchner, Deby was asked by journalists about the possibility of U.N. blue helmets or European Union troops being deployed, and replied: "Why not?"
He said [that] proposals for a force for eastern Chad would be made public by June 25, the date on which France has called a meeting of foreign ministers from several countries to discuss Darfur.
"We are agreed on the principle of deploying a force, but there are still some points to resolve, on which we must agree. The results of the discussions will be made public before the 25th of this month. The discussion will be on the formula of this force," Deby said.
"We have been proposing this to the international community since 2004," he said.
Faced with large numbers of refugees arriving from Darfur, and struggling to contain violence linked to war in Darfur and a domestic rebellion, Chad has repeatedly called for international assistance to protect refugees in its eastern areas from what it has at times called Sudanese aggression.
But despite growing international pressure to end civil war in Darfur, branded genocide by Washington, Sudan has resisted deployment of a planned 23,000-strong U.N. force, and Chad has insisted [that] any international force on its own territory should be made up of police and gendarmes, not soldiers.
Deby's Prime Minister, Nouradine Delwa Kassire Coumakoye, said two weeks ago that deploying foreign troops to the area may be seen by neighbouring countries as a threat.
AIRLIFT
"The situation on the ground is not nice," said Kouchner, co-founder of the Nobel Peace Prize-winning charity Medecins Sans Frontieres, who visited refugee camps in eastern Chad on Saturday.
French planes based in Chad, together with aircraft from other European countries, would airlift several tonnes of humanitarian aid to the areas [that] he visited, which are cut off by road due to seasonal rains, he said.
Kouchner said [that] there were various possibilities for improving aid access to stricken civilians.
He has proposed a humanitarian corridor through Chad, secured by European Union and U.N. troops, to channel aid safely to civilians in eastern Chad and Darfur. But last week Chad's premier rejected the proposal as unnecessary.
Kouchner is on his first visit to Africa since being appointed foreign minister by new French President Nicolas Sarkozy, who said last week [that] the United Nations and African Union should quickly deploy a peacekeeping force in the region.
Kouchner was due to continue later on Sunday to Sudan.
From AFP, reprinted on Sudan.Net...
Chadian President Idriss Deby Itno said [on] Sunday [that] he was ready to consider sending an international humanitarian force to the southeast, which has been hit by fighting in neighbouring Sudan.
Speaking after talks with French Foreign Minister Bernard Kouchner, who has made the conflict in the western Sudanese region of Darfur a priority, Deby said [that] the "formula" according to which the force would be picked would have to be discussed.
"On the principle, we agree on a number of precise points which will be made public before June 25," when an international conference on Darfur is due to be held in Paris.
The civil conflict in Darfur between rebels and the Sudanese government, backed up by Janjaweed militias, has left 200,000 dead since 2003, according to the United Nations, and [has] displaced two million.
Some 230,000 Darfur Sudanese have sought refuge in Chad, and in recent months, their numbers have been swollen by 160,000 locally displaced people fleeing cross-border violence.
"We haven't defined a precise solution, but we have looked for ways ... that would certainly enable us to bring more comfort to the refugees (from Darfur now in camps in southeastern Chad), those (Chadians) who have been displaced (from their villages near the border) and humanitarian staff working in extremely difficult security conditions," Deby said.
Asked about a possible UN and European force deployment, Deby answered: "Why not?"
Chad agreed to such a deployment late last year, but in February, changed its mind and ruled out deployment of a UN force to make its borders with Darfur and the Central African Republic more secure.
Deby's new attitude was explained by a diplomatic source as a reflection of the more-humanitarian nature of the proposed force, whereas the previous aim of making the borders secure was a job [that] Chad saw as being for its own military to perform.
Kouchner said [that] he had "drafted with President Deby a certain number of options which we shall work on with a group of three people from each side in Paris in a few days and again here."
Paris envisages the despatch of a force made up of "French, European and Chadian troops, as well as police from other African countries, under the UN flag," according to a diplomatic source.
Its job would be to "secure" the area around camps of displaced people and refugees, as well as "helping displaced people go back to their villages," the source said.
Later [on] Sunday, Kouchner was due to meet Sudanese President Omar al-Beshir in Khartoum.
French Foreign Minister Bernard Kouchner arrived in Khartoum on Sunday, ahead of talks with President Omar al-Beshir on the crisis in war-torn Darfur.
On Monday, Kouchner will also meet his Sudanese counterpart, Lam Akol, and will "urge Sudan to accept the deployment of a hybrid (peacekeeping) force" in Darfur, a French diplomatic source told AFP.
Sudan has grudgingly accepted a UN force in Darfur, although the troops' mandate is still under discussion.
The proposal is for the deployment of a 23,000-strong peacekeeping force, to replace the current 7,000 African Union soldiers in the region.
The United Nations wants its own command system, but Khartoum wants the force to be under African control.
According to UN figures, more than 200,000 people have been killed and more than two million [have been] displaced in four years of conflict in Darfur which the United States has called a "genocide."
Sudan says that only some 9,000 people have died.
Kouchner is on the final stop of an African tour that has also taken him to Sudan's western neighbour, Chad, and to Mali, where he attended the investiture of new president Amadou Toumani Toure.
From the AP...
Sudanese officials welcomed French Foreign Minister Bernard Kouchner on his arrival in Khartoum on Sunday, stating [that] they believed [that] France had a role to play in bringing peace to the beleaguered Darfur region.
A longtime humanitarian activist who has announced stopping Darfur's violence as his top diplomatic priority, Kouchner came to the Sudanese capital on the last leg of a five-day African tour.
"I have no preconceived idea ... I am happy to be in Sudan," Kouchner told a large crowd of journalists at the airport. He said [that] Sudan was a country [that] he knew well and had visited several times in the past, adding [that] he looked forward to talks with Sudanese officials on Monday.
The minister, who co-founded the aid group Doctors Without Borders, took office last month.
"Mr. Kouchner is a very well known figure in Sudan because of his past role with Medecins Sans Frontieres, and we welcome his visit," said Ali Sadiq, the spokesman for Sudan's Foreign Ministry.
France has been less vocal than the U.S., Britain and others in pushing for an end to violence in Darfur, where over 200,000 people have been killed and 2.5 million [have been] chased from their homes in four years of fighting between government forces and local rebels.
"We will wait to hear from him (Kouchner) what role France wants to play now," Sudan's Foreign Minister Lam Akol told The Associated Press over the telephone.
The French have a 1,000-strong military presence in neighboring Chad, where Darfur's conflict is spilling over, and Sadiq said [that] Khartoum welcomed Paris' newly voiced interest in helping resolve the conflict.
"The French (army) is not far away from our boarder in Chad, and we have always had stable bilateral relations with France," he said.
Kouchner is planning a conference on Darfur in Paris on June 25 among a new "contact group" that would include G-8 members, China and South Africa. A Socialist, he was appointed foreign minister by conservative President Nicolas Sarkozy, who was elected last month and included ending Darfur's crisis among his campaign pledges.
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