N'DJAMENA, Oct 25 (Reuters) - Chad's government said on Thursday there were hopes a U.S. missionary held by a northern rebel group could be released in the next few days. The missionary, Steve Godbold, was seized in the northern Tibesti mountains near the Libyan border more than a week ago by the rebel Movement for Democracy and Justice in Chad (MDJT). MDJT leader Aboubakar Choua Dazi said on Wednesday his group was questioning Godbold, a member of the Christian missionary organisation The Evangelical Alliance Mission (TEAM), because it suspected he was a Chadian government spy. "Mr Godbold was working on a humanitarian assistance project funded by the U.S. Department of Defense, at the initiative of the former U.S. ambassador to Chad," Solomon Atayi, public affairs officer at the U.S. embassy in N'Djamena, told Reuters. He was clarifying a previous description given by other U.S. officials who had said Godbold was working as a sub-contractor on a U.S. government-financed development project. Atayi said the U.S. Defense Department-funded project Godbold was engaged in involved the drilling of village wells. Chad's Secretary of State for the Interior Abderamane Djasnabaille said local authorities and traditional leaders in Tibesti were in contact with his abductors and trying to obtain his release. Local people had also been mobilised. "There are hopes that he can be freed in the next few days," he told Reuters. MDJT leader Choua Dazi told Reuters by telephone from southern Libya on Wednesday that his group would consider releasing Godbold in two or three days after they had finished questioning him. He added Godbold was being well treated. The MDJT was formed in 1998, when it launched an armed insurgency in Chad's north under the leadership of President Idriss Deby's former defence chief, Youssouf Togoimi.
