SUDAN: Chad Foreign minister Ahmat Allam-Mi apologizes to Sudan over border clash

Chad's Foreign Minister Ahmat Allam-Mi on Saturday (April14) repeated his country's apology to Sudan over a deadly border clash, but insisted N'djamena would pursue Chadian rebels across the border into Sudan again if it had to. Chad's Foreign Minister Ahmat Allam-Mi on Saturday (April 14) repeated his country's apology to Sudan over a deadly border clash, but insisted N'djamena would pursue Chadian rebels across the border into Sudan again if it had to. Allam-Mi made the comment after a meeting in Khartoum with Sudanese President Omar el-Bashir during which he handed Bashir a letter from Chad's President Idriss Deby that focused on finding a peaceful resolution to their dispute. Sudan has said 17 of its soldiers were killed on Monday in a clash with Chadian troops who crossed the border into Sudanese territory. "(Sudanese) Border intelligence and our forces fought on the border," Allam-Mi told reporters. "We had no idea these forces were there because we were pursing Chadian mercenaries and the Janjaweed," he added. "We met them and there was a problem. We apologized, but we can't say that the responsibility rests with us alone," the Chadian foreign minister said. The incident triggered the latest in a series of disputes between N'djamena and Khartoum since violence from a four-year-old conflict in Sudan's western Darfur province spilled over the border into eastern Chad. Chadian officials said ahead of Allam-Mi's visit that it demonstrated N'djamena's desire to use diplomacy to resolve differences between the countries. Allam-Mi denied any deliberate attack on Sudan, but insisted that Chad would pursue rebel forces battling the government of Deby into Sudanese territory if the rebels continue to hide there. "With regard to what concerns us in Chad, we will take care of ourselves and hold back our forces, but if the mercenaries attack us again, we will follow them wherever they go and I hope the Sudanese brothers allow us to follow them inside Sudan because they are the ones creating problems for us," Allam-Mi vowed. "They attack us in Chad and flee into Sudan. They are the ones causing us problems, the Janjaweed and mercenaries," he continued. Libya has intervened on a regular basis to lower tensions between the two oil-producing neighbors, who are both engaged in negotiations with the United Nations over plans to deploy peacekeepers in Darfur and eastern Chad. The four-year war in Darfur, which has killed an estimated 200,000 people, has driven several hundred thousand refugees into Chad and prompted the U.N. to study a peacekeeping force for the country's lawless east. Libya said this week it and Eritrea had deployed military and security observers on the Chad-Sudan border. A late February summit that Gaddafi hosted to keep the peace between Chad and Sudan, which also involved Eritrea, agreed "observation mechanisms" along the Darfur frontier. N'Djamena accuses Sudan of supporting Chadian rebels based in Darfur, while Sudan's Janjaweed militias are raiding ever further into eastern Chad. The No. 2 U.S. State Department official, John Negroponte, is currently in Sudan and is due to visit Chad.

ITN Source | April 15, 2007

Tags:. .incident. .focused. .neighbors. .letter. .conflict