N'DJAMENA (Reuters) - Chad's rebels on Monday urged European Union member states not to send peacekeeping troops to the country's east, saying the force would not be neutral because it was dominated by France.
By Alistair Thomson
N'DJAMENA (Reuters) - Chad's rebels on Monday urged European Union member states not to send peacekeeping troops to the country's east, saying the force would not be neutral because it was dominated by France.
The rebels said France, which is contributing more than half of the 3,700-strong EU force (EUFOR) to be deployed in eastern Chad, had directly helped President Idriss Deby to beat off a rebel attack on the capital N'Djamena earlier this month.
The alliance of anti-Deby rebel groups said in a statement that French tanks and helicopters, part of a French military contingent stationed in Chad, had opened fire in the recent fighting. Civilians were killed, it added.
!ADVERTISEMENT!France, which has rallied international support behind Deby, has denied its forces took any direct part in combat, although it said they fired back in self-defense while evacuating more than 1,000 French and other foreign nationals from N'Djamena.
The rebel statement said: "France has shown to the world she is no longer neutral in this conflict that opposes Deby's dictatorial regime against the armed national resistance."
During intense fighting around and in N'Djamena on February 1-3, EU commanders suspended the deployment of the EU force to the east of the oil-producing former French colony. EUFOR has a United Nations mandate to protect more than half a million refugees and civilians in eastern Chad who have fled fighting in neighboring Sudan's war-torn Darfur region.
A spokesman for EUFOR, which has insisted its forces will remain strictly neutral in the internal Chadian conflict, said on Friday that EU commanders hoped to resume the interrupted deployment of troops to the country this week.
The rebel alliance said France's "unconditional support" for Deby, whose opponents denounce him as a corrupt and dictatorial ruler, had changed the circumstances of the EU deployment.
"The alliance of the armed opposition no longer believes in the neutrality of a force essentially composed of French troops and whose operational direction is carried out by France," the rebel statement said.
"As a result, (the alliance) immediately demands that other European countries refrain from sending their nationals in EUFOR, whose final objective is to protect the Deby regime," the statement added.
After withdrawing from the capital a week ago following battles in the streets that killed at least 165 people and injured more than 800, the rebels have pulled back east of N'Djamena towards the border with Sudan.
Chad accuses Sudan of backing the anti-Deby rebels to block the EU deployment, a charge denied by Khartoum.
The rebels said on Sunday they had occupied the eastern town of Am Timan and that they were still in control of the centre of the landlocked central African country.
Since the fighting, French warplanes have been flying daily reconnaissance missions over Chad.
A French military spokesman, Pascal le Testu, confirmed the rebels were at Am Timan. But he said government forces controlled the central towns of Mongo and Bitkine, which the rebels claimed to have taken at the weekend.
(Additional reporting by Pascal Fletcher in Dakar; Writing by Pascal Fletcher; Editing by Charles Dick)
