(adds beginning of week objective, Kouchner) BRUSSELS, Feb 8 (Reuters) - A delayed European Union peacekeeping mission to eastern Chad hopes to resume deployment next week, a spokesman for the force said on Friday, after a rebel attack on the capital N'Djamena caused it to hold off. "We hope (to deploy) as soon as possible, from the beginning of next week," Lieutenant Colonel Philippe de Cussac said. "We are working very hard on planning." De Cussac could not say on which day the deployment would resume or how many troops would fly in. "It depends on the situation on the ground," he said by telephone from the force's Paris headquarters. "Nothing has been decided." The EU had hoped its 3,700 peacekeepers would begin joining an advance party in eastern Chad last week to begin protecting half a million Sudanese refugees and displaced Chadians who have fled violence spilling over from Sudan's Darfur region. It suspended the move when rebels attacked the capital and tried to overthrow President Idriss Deby over the weekend. Deby said on Wednesday his government had regained total control of the country and urged the EU on Thursday to deploy its forces quickly as his government tried to tighten security. As calm returned to the dusty riverside capital, hundreds of refugees, who fled to Cameroon from clashes that killed at least 160 civilians, returned over the river border. Aid workers said that as many as 850 people were being treated for bullet and mortar wounds. French Foreign minister Bernard Kouchner said Russia had provided several helicopters for the EU force. "Our Russian friends have just given us three to five helicopters, for free, for the European force in Chad," Kouchner told French newspaper Le Monde. (Reporting by Ingrid Melander, additional reporting by Francois Murphy editing by Michael Winfrey)
Chadian refugees sit in a makeshift camp in Kousseri, over the border in Cameroon February 6, 2008. Thousands of refugees who fled weekend fighting in the Chadian capital have arrived in ...
