‘EU must support Chad peace talks’

AS THE funeral of the first member of the EU peacekeeping mission to be killed in Chad took place yesterday, Irish MEP Colm Burke called for the European Parliament to throw its weight behind peace talks in the country.

A summit is due to take place later this week between Chad and Sudan in Dakar and Burke, who is due to travel to Chad in the coming days, said the EU must do all it can to facilitate an all-inclusive political reconciliation process between the two sides.

“Just before this debate, several of my MEP colleagues and I met with Chadian leader and opposition member of Parliament, Mr Yorongar, who went missing after the rebel offensive in early February,” said Burke.

“He was seized by state security forces on February 3 in Chad, but managed to escape to Cameroon before being offered asylum in France. His colleague Mohamed Saleh remains missing.

“The current crackdown on political opponents as well as human rights defenders must end.”

The French peacekeeper, who died after mistakenly straying into Sudanese territory, was buried yesterday. Burke said it was regrettable that such a death had occurred in circumstances where the initial path-finding troops, including 50 Irish soldiers, were trying to figure out the demarcations as to which area where they could and could not go.

“In my view and due to the humanitarian and security situation, the deployment of the EUFOR Chad/CAR mission has become indispensable,” he said.