KHARTOUM, 12 July 2004 — Sudan, under international pressure to take action to end the humanitarian crisis in Darfur, agreed yesterday with Chad to deploy a joint force along their troubled border, Chad national radio reported.
The agreement was reached between Sudan’s President Omar Bashir and his Chadian counterpart Idriss Deby at a summit meeting in the Sudanese town of Geneina, the capital of West Darfur state located 20 km from the border.
The two leaders also agreed to create a security commission and a panel to review the damaged and pillaged property in two face-to-face meetings held before Deby returned to the Chadian capital Ndjamena, the radio reported.
Chad’s radio had said earlier Saturday that the force’s deployment was contingent on the disarmament of the Janjaweed militias which have been fighting a revolt by ethnic Africans in Darfur alongside the Sudanese Army.
Speaking at a rally in Geneina, Bashir said his government would provide returning displaced persons with food supplies, seeds and farming implements.
The government will also resume work on development projects, such as construction of the highway for western Sudan that had been stopped due to the Darfur revolt launched last year, he said, quoted by Sudan’s state radio.
Bashir also expressed thanks to Deby for “all the assistance he has offered” in Darfur.
Bashir and Deby last met Thursday in Addis Ababa with the presidents of Nigeria and South Africa, and a decision was taken for the African Union (AU) to deploy an armed force to protect its cease-fire observers in Darfur as soon as possible.
Chadian Foreign Minister Nagoum Yassoum said in Addis Ababa that the AU force, to which Sudan has raised no objection, would be around 300 strong and that the number of observers would be increased.
The idea of such a force was first raised in late May in an agreement for the AU to monitor a shaky April cease-fire signed by Khartoum and Darfur rebel groups. About 25 AU observers are already on the ground in Darfur. On June 17, armed clashes broke out on Chad’s side of the border between Chadian forces and the Janjaweed militias.
Tension between the neighbors was already running high after the Arab militias penetrated up to 25 km inside Chad on May 5, triggering clashes with the Chadian Army. But Chad’s interim Defense Minister Emmanuel Nadingar has said his country will make “all possible efforts to help the Sudanese reach a peace settlement” in Darfur.
Meanwhile, southern Sudanese rebel chief John Garang warned Khartoum yesterday he would not allow a planned interim government to continue what he called the “very serious crime of state-organized attacks” on Darfur’s civilians.
Garang, set to become Sudan’s first vice president under a planned accord ending a separate war in the south, said Khartoum was using the same techniques in Darfur that it used for 21 years against his forces in the south.
“If we are to form a new government of national unity — and that’s what the agreement says — we obviously will not allow that government to fight its own citizens in Darfur,” he said in Nateng in the south’s Eastern Equatoria province.
