Bozize says president must resign

Francois Bozize, the Central African Republic's (CAR) fugitive army general, who recently told Radio France International (RFI) that he had loyal armed supporters in the CAR, has called for the resignation of President Ange-Felix Patasse. Bozize said he would not return home from exile in Chad until after Patasse's departure. Bozize fled to avoid arrest on the orders of a judicial commission probing a failed coup on 28 May 2001. He said, in an FRI broadcast on Tuesday, that only 40 of his estimated 300 renegade soldiers had crossed into Chad, and that Chadian soldiers had disarmed them all. "However, the rest remained intact inside the CAR," he said. Bozize was speaking following reports that his forces had on 10 August captured the northern town of Kabo, 65 km south of CAR's border with Chad. At the time, the CAR accused Chad of responsibility for a 15-km incursion into CAR, while Chad said "unidentified mercenaries" had attacked its soldiers at the border locality of Sido. Bozize told RFI that his men had "emptied the arms depot" of the First Operational Unit of the CAR capital, Bangui, of some 1,000 weapons and an assortment of ammunition. "CAR authorities know that very well. There is no use denying this to accuse Chad," he said. CAR Prime Minister Martin Ziguele told RFI, however, that his government had no plan to attack Chad. "We do not have the financial, human, infrastructural means, nor the desire to attack anyone," he said Since independence on 13 August 1960, Ziguele said, CAR was the only country in central Africa that had never had "an internal war situation" or an armed conflict with a neighbouring country. CAR's security problem, he said, was largely one of highway robbers. Relations between CAR and Chad have been strained ever since Bozize fled to the southern Chadian town of Sarh in November 2001. A Chadian official said at the time that Bozize had been granted refuge out of "humanitarian concern". Tension rose between two countries as CAR government forces pursued those loyal to Bozize along the common border.