Chad, Sudan leaders hold talks
2008-01-28 08:38
Tripoli - The leaders of Sudan and Chad gathered in Tripoli on Sunday for talks aimed at calming tensions along their long, porous border and ending the Darfur conflict.
Egyptian President Hosni Mubarak was due to fly to Libya to join the talks involving Chad President Idriss Deby, Sudan's Omar Hassan al-Bashir and Libyan host Muammar Gaddafi, said reports.
It said top officials from Eritrea, Senegal, Mauritania and Gabon would attend and that preparations for an African Union summit in Ethiopia this week were also on the agenda.
Libyan officials said the talks would begin once all leaders had arrived, but declined to say what would be discussed.
Gaddafi was seen as an influential player in the region and had hosted several rounds of talks aimed at reconciling Chad and Sudan and ending the violence in Darfur.
EU wants to deploy troops in Chad
Relations between Chad and Sudan had been tense in recent years as both tried to quell insurgencies on either side of their frontier.
They accused each other of backing rebels trying to overthrow their respective governments.
Eastern Chad had seen a spillover of refugees and Arab Janjaweed raiders from Sudan's Darfur region. Khartoum routinely rejected Chadian accusations that it supported Chadian rebels fighting an insurgency against Deby.
The European Union wanted to deploy peacekeepers in eastern Chad next month to protect about 400 000 displaced people, but the plan had been repeatedly delayed by a lack of equipment.
International experts estimated that some 200 000 people had died in Darfur and 2.5 million forced to flee their homes by looting, killing and rape. The Sudanese government puts the death toll at 9 000 and said the West exaggerated the conflict.