PARIS: France is asking its European Union partners to consider sending a force of up to 12,000 troops to Chad to provide aid for people fleeing the Darfur conflict in Sudan. A French Foreign Ministry spokesman confirmed yesterday that Paris was also trying to gather foreign ministers from Group of Eight nations plus China for talks at the end of June about the crisis in Darfur.
Fighting between government-backed militias and rebel groups in the western Sudanese region has killed more than 200,000 people and driven 2mn from their homes. Paris is alarmed at the rising numbers reaching Chad, a former colony, and Sudan’s neighbour. “We are saying there’s a deteriorating situation in eastern Chad, where it is necessary to intervene to provide humanitarian aid to a population of around 400,000, of which half have been displaced from Sudan,” said French Foreign Ministry deputy spokesman Denis Simonneau.
Liberation newspaper reported on Saturday that Paris had approached European Union partners including Germany about planning and taking part in an EU-led force of between 3,000 and 12,000 troops. “The figures mentioned in the article are a range,” said Simonneau. “It’s not a target we have fixed. It’s an estimate (of needs).”
Liberation likened the plan to the EU’s decision in 2003 to send around 1,500 troops to Bunia in eastern Congo to supply aid and stop fighting - the EU’s first military operation outside Europe. That operation took place under a UN mandate for a multinational force and the troops were mostly French. – Reuters |
