Chad-Sudan pact seen crucial for peace in Darfur

By Nick Tattersall

DAKAR (Reuters) - Chadian rebels on Friday dismissed the latest peace pact between Chad and Sudan, a deal that Khartoum and Paris said must succeed if there was any chance of finding a political solution in Darfur.

Sudanese President Omar Hassan al-Bashir and his Chadian counterpart Idriss Deby signed the non-aggression deal in Senegal late on Thursday in an effort to end cross-border rebel attacks on their respective territories.

But the Chadian National Alliance, part of a rebel coalition that attacked the capital N'Djamena last month, besieging Deby in his presidential palace for two days, dismissed the Dakar deal and vowed to pursue their campaign against him.

"It doesn't concern us. If Deby doesn't want dialogue, then we're going to chase him out by force," Alliance spokesman Ali Gadaye told Reuters.

"We're in our own national territory and we have a clear objective: to liberate our people who are being held hostage by a family clan (Deby)," he said, speaking via a satellite phone.

The deal, witnessed by U.N. Secretary-General Ban Ki-moon and representatives of the European Union and the African Union, aims to revive a string of agreements that have failed to end unrest on the border, which marks the western fringe of Darfur.

"There cannot be, in effect, sustainable stability, or a political solution to Darfur, without a normalisation of relations between Khartoum and N'Djamena," Frederic Desagneaux, deputy spokesman for the French Foreign Ministry, told a news conference in Paris.

Under the pact, drafted by Senegalese President Abdoulaye Wade, Deby and Bashir pledged to ban the activities of all armed groups and to prevent the use of their respective territories to destabilise their neighbours.