Patasse and Deby of Chad meet, announce accord

President Ange-Felix Patasse of the Central African Republic (CAR) on Wednesday met President Idriss Deby in the Chadian capital, N'djamena, to discuss ongoing tensions between the two countries, Radiodiffusion Nationale Tchadienne reported. Problems first arose in November 2001 when CAR government forces tried to arrest the CAR former army commander, Gen Francois Bozize, on behalf of a judicial commission probing the coup attempt of 28 May 2001. Bozize refused to comply with the arrest warrant, asserting that he had not been given sufficient safety guarantees. Bozize had been dismissed as army chief of staff on 26 October 2001 after being accused of involvement in a coup plot. He denied involvement at the time, saying he had backed Patasse during army mutinies of 1996 and 1997. Soldiers allied to Bozize came to his defence, and five days of intermittent fighting in the northern region of the capital, Bangui, ensued before Bozize and his forces were dislodged and fled northward to the southern Chadian town of Sarh. The CAR authorities then accused Chad of backing Bozize and his supporters, who repeatedly engaged in confrontations with CAR military forces along the two nations' common border. Chad later granted Bozize asylum out of "humanitarian concern", an official of the Chadian Ministry of Communications told IRIN in January. Concurrently, Chadian rebels were raiding southern Chad from bases in CAR. Chad deployed troops "to block the infiltration of CAR troops in Chad", the Chadian official said at the time, "but there has been no direct confrontation between the armies of the two countries". Centrafrique-Presse reported that after their two-hour meeting on Wednesday, Patasse and Deby announced the immediate reopening of their common border, and stated that outstanding issues would be addressed by a bilateral commission of experts and parliamentarians. Also attending the talks were UN Special Representative of the Secretary-General to CAR, Gen Lamine Cisse, and the Libyan minister in charge of African affairs and COMESSA [Community of Sahel-Saharan States] representative, Abd al-Salam Ali al-Turayki.