Chadian President Idriss Deby held talks in Tripoli on Saturday with Libyan leader Moamer Kadhafi just two days after a spectacular raid on a key air base dashed government hopes of a swift resumption of peace talks with northern rebels. Deby issued no statement before flying home from his visit to the Libyan capital, according to AFP.
Meanwhile, the official JANA news agency said only that the two leaders exchanged views on the "situation in Africa and ways of reinforcing peace and stability in the continent".
However, his visit to Tripoli came less than a fortnight after the death in a Tripoli hospital of the leader of the rebel Movement for Democracy and Justice in Chad (MJDT), Youssouf Togoimi, whom Ndjamena had regarded as the key obstacle to implementation of a Libyan-brokered peace deal.
After Togoimi's death from wounds sustained in a mine explosion, both Chadian officials and MJDT number two Adoum Maurice el Bongo had expressed readiness to resume discussions on the framework agreement struck in January.
However, on Thursday the rebels launched a surprise attack on the key government garrison town of Faya, well outside their normal field of operations in the far north, in which they said they had destroyed three aircraft on the ground and killed about twenty government troops.
Deby slammed the raid as an "act of terrorism" deliberately calculated to stymie peace moves. "It's at the very moment that I was preparing to go and make contact with them myself that they chose to commit this act of terrorism, taking advantage of the fact that our soldiers were off their guard," he told reporters Thursday.
In addition, he warned that the Chadian government would "fight all those who won't accept the hand stretched out to make peace and open talks. We can't go on playing cat and mouse, enough is enough." (Albawaba.com)
© 2002 Al Bawaba (www.albawaba.com)
