By Pascal Fletcher DAKAR, Jan 9 (Reuters) - The United Nations should send a force to Chad immediately to protect civilians on the violent eastern border with Sudan, despite reservations expressed by ex-U.N. chief Kofi Annan, Human Rights Watch said on Tuesday. The U.S.-based human rights group called on the U.N. Security Council to authorise the deployment of international military personnel and monitors to eastern Chad, where hundreds of civilians have been killed in militia raids and inter-communal ethnic violence in the last few months. The latest appeal for a separate U.N. deployment in Chad came as international diplomatic efforts resumed to try to end the conflict in Sudan's neighbouring Darfur region and to agree a workable compromise for a peacekeeping force there. Sudan has been fiercely resisting a plan to deploy U.N. troops in Darfur, where a local rebellion combined with ethnic violence has killed 200,000 people since 2003 in a conflict now spilling over into Chad and Central African Republic. Khartoum indicated this week it had softened its stance, raising hopes for a deal on Darfur peacekeeping. "The United Nations has yet to deploy in Darfur, but at a minimum it can send a force to protect civilians in Chad and secure the border," Human Rights Watch's Africa director Peter Takirambudde said in a statement sent to Reuters. DRASTIC DETERIORATION The group issued a 70-page report documenting a drastic deterioration in the human rights situation in eastern Chad, where it said more than 300 civilians were killed and at least 17,000 people displaced in militia violence in November alone. "Chad and Sudan are supporting rebel insurgencies on both sides of their border while militias rampage through eastern Chad and civilians are left to fend for themselves," Takirambudde said. The U.N. refugee agency UNHCR said on Friday fresh violence in east Chad, including cross-border raids by Sudanese Janjaweed militia from Darfur and ethnic clashes between Arabs and non-Arabs, had displaced 20,000 people in the past fortnight. The Security Council was due to meet this week to discuss the possible deployment of an international security force to eastern Chad and northern Central African Republic. HRW noted that before ending his tenure as U.N. Secretary General in December, Annan had issued a report expressing reservations about such a deployment. Annan said ongoing hostilities in the two landlocked African countries between their governments and rebel groups would pose risks for U.N. peacekeepers and his report recommended working first for a political solution and national reconciliation. But HRW said that since this report, one Chad rebel group had signed a peace accord with the government, which has said it would accept an international peacekeeping force.
