Chad 'uses' Darfur refugees

2008-02-13 10:19

Khartoum - Sudan accused Chad on Tuesday of using some 300 000 Darfur refugees as bargaining chips in the growing dispute between the two countries, a day after Chad's prime minister threatened to expel the refugees if the international community failed to transfer them elsewhere.

Chadian Prime Minister Nouradin Koumakoye's threat followed repeated accusations that Sudan was fomenting violence in Chad because Darfur refugees were sheltering in the country's east.

Chadian rebels often clashed with government forces in eastern Chad and attacked the capital earlier this month before being driven off.

Sudan had denied involvement, and the country's refugee commissioner, Mohamed Ahmed al-Aghbash, said on Tuesday that any move by Chad to expel Darfur refugees would be "a violation of the Geneva international laws and convention".

Chad threatens to expel Darfuris

Al-Aghbash was quoted by Sudan's official news agency as saying: "This is a mere trading and bargaining in the issue of the Sudanese refugees along the borderline with Chad." The issue is "a humanitarian question that should not be linked to political differences".

Under the 1951 United Nations refugee convention drafted in Geneva, its signatories, which included Chad, could not return a refugee to countries, where his or her life or freedom could be at risk on racial, religious or political grounds.

Chad had threatened previously to expel the Darfur refugees, who had fled five years of fighting between the region's ethnic African rebel groups and Sudan's Arab-dominated government that had killed more than 200 000 people.

After attacks by Chadian rebels in April 2006, President Idriss Deby said he would force them back into Sudan if the international community did not take action to prevent Sudan from destabilising his country. Deby backed down a few days later under intense international pressure.

140 000 Chadians displaced

Over the weekend, about 12 000 more Darfur people fled across the border into eastern Chad after air strikes by the Sudanese military on several towns.

An estimated 280 000 Sudanese already were living in camps in eastern Chad, and the United Nations said some 140 000 Chadians in that area also had been displaced by violence linked to the Darfur conflict.

Meanwhile, Sudan's military spokesperson on Tuesday criticised the UN for turning a "blind eye" to incursions from Chad of Darfur rebels who found safe havens there, and for exclusively condemning Sudanese army actions.

The comments by Brigadier General Osman Mohamed al-Aghbash referred to Friday's bombing by Sudanese helicopter gunships of three border towns in Darfur along the Chad frontier - Sirba, Suleia and Abu Surouj - which rebels claimed to have seized earlier this month.

The rebels had been trying to consolidate their positions in West Darfur, and Khartoum said they regrouped and rearmed across the border in Chad.

- AP