KHARTOUM, 8 November 2003 — Sudan and Chad have agreed to form a joint force to prevent cross-border activities by opposition groups and to control smuggling and banditry operations, Sudanese police said yesterday.
Defense and interior ministers of the neighboring countries met to endorse a military protocol foreseeing the creation of a cooperative force to maintain security along their common border, a police spokesman said.
The protocol had been drafted in Chad’s capital, N’djamena, on Oct. 11. Sudanese State Interior Minister Ahmed Mohamed Haroun was quoted as saying that the joint force would prevent illegal border crossings and smuggling operations, in addition to preventing armed opposition elements of either country from acting against the other.
Such armed opponents caught waging hostile activities will be arrested and handed over to authorities in their home country, the minister said.
The protocol also provides for returning looted property to its original owner, and will coordinate military, political and local authorities of the two sides for addressing common problems, Haroun said.
The joint security commission meeting was co-chaired by Sudanese Defense Minister Bekri Hassan Saleh and his Chadian counterpart Mohamed Nouri. The Sudan-Chad border area is plagued by unrest, notably in Sudan’s western province of Darfur.
Meanwhile, the Sudan office of the United Nations High Commissioner for Refugees announced a strategy yesterday to repatriate refugees from Sudan to neighboring countries and vice-versa.
UNHCR representative Ahmed Said Farah said conditions for the 347,847 refugees in Sudan were “improving in terms of health and other needs”. He hoped the UN agency could close down its refugee centers in eastern Sudan by next year and said he would help Sudanese authorities run the centre once repatriation had been completed.
“I hope Sudanese people would benefit from these centers”, the representative noted. Farah said that repatriation to Ethiopia and Eritrea had been hindered mainly by the current offensive along the Sudanese-Eritrean border and the crisis between Ethiopian and Eritrea. Refugees numbered 1,967.
Eritrea and Ethiopia have the highest number of refuges in Sudan. Eritrean refugees numbered 328,000 and Ethiopians 14,000, Farah said. The UNHCR expressed readiness to accept Sudanese refugees in Sudan itself once a peace agreement between the government and the Sudan Peoples Liberation Movement had been signed.
He pointed out that assisted and non-assisted Sudanese refugees in six neighboring countries registered at 572,061. The repatriation program also includes more than four million internally displaced Sudanese. The UNHCR’s post-conflict strategy in southern Sudan would focus on integrating the returnees and helping them to live in peace with each other and the indigenous society.
