KHARTOUM, May 18 (Reuters) - Chadian President Idriss Deby will visit Khartoum next month for talks aimed at fully normalising frayed ties with neighbouring Sudan, a Sudanese Foreign Ministry official said on Friday. The two countries, who have long been at loggerheads over military clashes and rebel activity on their volatile desert frontier, signed a Saudi-brokered reconciliation deal on May 3. They have pledged to cooperate in stabilising war-ravaged Darfur and neighbouring areas of Chad.
State Minister for Foreign Affairs Al-Samani Al-Wasiyla said the visit was part of efforts to implement a Libyan-sponsored deal to end a crisis between the two countries brokered in Tripoli in February 2006, the state news agency SUNA said.
Wasiyla said he had recently visited Chad to convey a message from Sudanese President Omar Hassan al-Bashir to Deby. He did not say what the message was, but said he had discussed with Chadian officials the work of a joint military committee formed as part of efforts to end the border conflict.
Chad has repeatedly accused Sudan of backing rebels in Chad and of supporting attacks in Chad by Janjaweed militia based in Darfur, where the United Nations says 200,000 people have been killed and more than 2 million displaced in ethnic and political conflict that flared in 2003.
The Sudanese government calls the Janjaweed outlaws and says it has no ties to them. It accuses Chad of backing Darfur rebels.
Officials from the African Union, whose 7,000 peacekeepers have failed to ease violence in Darfur, say the conflict cannot be resolved unless hostilities cease on the Sudan-Chad border.
But several bilateral peace accords made by the two leaders over the last 18 months have failed to prevent fresh violence spilling out of Sudan's conflict-torn Darfur region into Chad. Deby broke off diplomatic relations with Sudan in April 2006 after fighting back a rebel attack on the Chadian capital N'Djamena that he said was backed by Sudan. The two sides agreed last August to restore ties and reopen embassies and the common border.
