KHARTOUM: Chadian airport authorities are holding the head of Darfur’s most heavily armed rebel group, the Justice and Equality Movement, denying him access to the Sudanese region through neighboring Chad, a JEM spokesman told AFP on Wednesday.
Authorities at Ndjamena airport refused entry to Khalil Ibrahim and a number of other JEM members who had arrived from the Libyan capital Tripoli at 1:00 am (0000 GMT), JEM spokesman Ahmed Hussein Adam told AFP.
"When they landed, Chadian authorities confiscated their passports and refused to let them into Chadian territory and ordered them to go back (to Libya)," Adam said, speaking by telephone from London.
"The pilot refused to let them onboard the plane because they did not have the necessary documents. Khalil and his delegation are currently in Ndjamena airport," Adam said.
There was no immediate comment from Chadian authorities.
Khalil and his delegation had planned to head to Darfur through Chad, the only passage for them into the war-torn region of western Sudan.
Authorities in Chad are now trying to get Ibrahim and the JEM delegation to the Qatari capital Doha, the venue of recent peace feelers between the JEM and the Khartoum government, Adam said.
Those talks were suspended after the JEM accused the army of attacking its positions last month. The government then issued a warrant for the arrest of Ibrahim.
Adam said that by moving the JEM delegation to Qatar, Chad was "pushing the group to sign an agreement which is against the interests of the people of Darfur."
Adam called on the Chadian governemnt and President Idriss Deby to "immediately release Khalil and to let him into Darfur… and not to contribute to this conspiracy against the movement."
In January, Chad signed an agreement with Sudan to normalize relations, ending years of tension between the neighboring countries.
Chad has long accused Sudan of supporting rebels seeking to oust the government, while Khartoum has charged Ndjamena with backing ethnic minority rebels in Darfur.
The two agreed to deploy a joint force on their border, in a move aimed at ending the presence of rebels on each other’s territory and stemming their activity.
Chad and Sudan in the past signed similar agreements but those accords were never implemented.
Improved ties between the two countries are seen as a major step towards peace in Darfur, where the United Nations says about 300,000 people have died since ethnic rebels revolted in 2003. Khartoum says 10,000 were killed.
The two countries broke off diplomatic relations for several months in 2008 after a surprise rebel attack on Ndjamena which came close to overthrowing Deby before government forces rallied to rout the insurgents.
In 2008, more than 200 people were killed and hundreds wounded when the JEM launched a shock attack on Khartoum’s twin city of Omdurman.
