N’DJAMENA — Rebels in Chad yesterday announced an immediate cease-fire as France — emboldened by UN condemnation of the insurgents — declared it was poised to intervene militarily.
With refugees pouring into neighboring Cameroon and Nigeria, and government troops patrolling the barren streets of N’Djamena, the rebels said they were bowing to diplomatic pressure to halt their offensive against President Idriss Deby Itno’s regime. “Aware of the suffering of the Chadian people ... the forces of national resistance have given their agreement to an immediate cease-fire,” rebel spokesman Abderaman told AFP by satellite telephone.
The rebels who stormed N’Djamena over the weekend, pinning Deby inside his presidential palace were doing so, he said, “in line with the peace initiatives of fraternal countries Libya and Burkina Faso.”
Reacting to the announcement, Deby’s government said a cease-fire was pointless because the rebels, who last week rolled across the width of Chad from bases inside Sudan, had been “decimated.”
“Why a cease-fire? They don’t exist any more,” Prime Minister Nourredine Delwa Kassire Coumakoye told the French global TV channel France 24.
On the dusty sun-baked streets of N’Djamena, soldiers were seen by journalists on patrol in pickup trucks mounted with rockets and, in one case, an anti-aircraft machine gun. Burned-out cars, trucks and motorcycles littered the streets, as did bodies still uncollected.
In the wake of Monday’s unanimous Security Council statement, French President Nicolas Sarkozy said France, with 1,450 troops and Mirage fighter jets stationed in Chad, was ready to “do its duty” and intervene if need be.
“Now there is a legal decision taken unanimously by the Security Council, and if Chad was the victim of an aggression, France could in theory have the means to oppose such action,” he said in the French coastal town of Aytre. “Everyone needs to think carefully about this.”
France is also providing the bulk of a 3,700-strong European Union military force in Chad to protect refugees from Darfur and other parts of central Africa — a deployment that has been suspended due to the unrest.
Koulamallah, the rebel spokesman, said the tripartite rebel alliance wanted a cease-fire to be followed by “a non-exclusive national dialogue with a view to a peaceful resolution of the Chadian conflict.” He added that the alliance also wanted to see “the installation of a truly democratic political regime.”
