Chad, Sudan sign peace pact

2008-03-14 08:38

Dakar - Sudanese President Omar Hassan al-Bashir and Chadian President Idriss Deby signed a peace agreement on Thursday designed to end cross-border rebel attacks in a region, which included Sudan's conflict-ravaged Darfur area.

The signing, witnessed by United Nations Secretary-General Ban Ki-moon and Organisation of the Islamic Conference (OIC) head Ekmeleddin Ihsanoglu, also aimed to revive a string of past pacts that had failed to end fighting on both sides of the Chad-Sudan border.

"We solemnly pledge to ban the activities of all armed groups and to prevent the use of our respective territories to destabilise one or other of our states," said the agreement, brokered by Senegalese President Abdoulaye Wade.

The two oil-producing countries agreed to "normalise relations" and put a "definitive end" to their differences.

200 000 people killed

Foreign diplomats said Chadian rebels had regularly used the Darfur border region as a base from which to launch incursions into Chad. Sudan had in turn repeatedly accused Chad's government of backing Darfuri rebel groups.

The barren border areas of eastern Chad were home to half a million displaced, including Chadians uprooted by fighting and refugees from Darfur, where about 200 000 people had been killed in political and ethnic violence since 2003.

Instability on both sides of the border had hampered international efforts to deliver aid. It had also spilled into Central African Republic, worsening an insurgency there.

The latest pact foresaw the formation of a "contact group" made up of foreign ministers from a handful of African countries, who would meet monthly to ensure the deal - known as the Dakar agreement - was implemented in good faith.

Senegal hosts two-day summit

Deby and Bashir had met before to try to resolve their differences, which had brought the neighbours close to all-out war on a number of occasions.

They agreed in Dakar to commit themselves again to a string of past non-aggression pacts, brokered mostly by Libya, but also by Saudi Arabia, which subsequently collapsed.

Senegal was hosting a two-day summit of the 57-nation OIC, a diverse body grouping a quarter of the world's population spread across Africa, Asia and the Middle East.

Wade, who had sought to mediate in several African crises, drafted the accord signed by Deby and Bashir in the hope that signing it during the summit, in the presence of so many international witnesses, would lend it some extra weight.

Rebels from both Chad and Sudan's Darfur region, seen by many as fighting a proxy war for the feuding presidents, had already dismissed the pact, criticising it for failing to include them and saying it would not bring lasting peace.

Bashir, who accused Deby of failing to respect previous deals, had questioned the usefulness of yet another accord.

- Reuters