By Salah Sarrar TRIPOLI, April 17 (Reuters) - Chad and Sudan have formed a joint military committee as part of efforts to end a border conflict, a Libyan mediator said on Tuesday after talks between officials of the two countries in the Libyan capital. Libyan leader Muammar Gaddafi has taken the lead in trying to broker peace between Chad and Sudan, which have traded accusations for months about turmoil on their desert frontier. "The gathering here was successful because it was concluded by the creation of a joint military and high security committee, which will hold its first meeting in Khartoum on May 1," Ali Triki, Libya's envoy on Chad and Sudan, told Reuters. Chad has repeatedly accused Sudan of backing rebels in Chad and of supporting attacks in Chad by Janjaweed militia based in Sudan's troubled Darfur region. The Sudanese government calls the Janjaweed outlaws and says it has no ties to them. On April 10, Chad said its armed forces had clashed with Sudanese troops after pursuing Sudanese-backed rebels over the border. Sudan said 17 of its soldiers had been killed. The incident was the latest in a series of clashes between Chad and Sudan, as violence from the four-year-old conflict in Darfur has spilled over the border into eastern Chad. The Tripoli meeting, which was chaired by Triki, Gaddafi's top adviser on African issues, was attended by Chad's Territorial Administration Minister Ahmat Mahamat Bachir, Sudan's Foreign Relations Minister Al-Samani Al-Wasiyla and Eritrean government official Abdallah Jaber. "Military and security observers from Eritrea and Libya are now deployed on the Chad-Sudan border. They will get the means to carry out their mission," Triki said. Sudan's Wasiyla said it was hoped the committee would stop the flow of weapons and thwart those who sought to obstruct efforts to improve relations between Chad and Sudan. The meeting coincided with the arrival in Tripoli of U.S. Deputy Secretary of State John Negroponte, who was due to discuss the conflict in Sudan's Darfur region with Libyan officials. Officials from the African Union, whose peacekeepers have failed to ease violence in Darfur, say the conflict cannot be resolved unless hostilities cease on the Sudan-Chad border.
