EU agrees to send peacekeeping force to Chad 

The Eufor Chad/CAR operation, scheduled to begin in the coming weeks, primarily aims to protect refugees and displaced persons from Darfur, guarantee the delivery of humanitarian aid and protect the UN and humanitarian personnel, the ministers said after their meeting in Brussels. 

With 1,350 troops, France will send the largest contingent, followed by Ireland and Poland, which will provide about 400 troops each. In total, fourteen EU member states will contribute to the EU force, including Austria, Belgium, Greece, Italy, Poland, Romania, Spain, Sweden, the Czech Republic and the Netherlands. 

The force, operating under a UN mandate for a period of twelve months, is to be deployed in four areas - three in Chad and one in the CAR - and will be led by Irishman General Patrick Nash. 

Almost €120 million has been earmarked for the mission, but military officials said the real cost could easily reach €1 billion. 

The ministers urged the Chadian and Sudanese governments to "abstain from any action that could further destabilise the current situation," as well as to "terminate support to armed groups operating in Eastern Chad or Darfur". They referred to recent attacks by rebel groups from Darfur in eastern Chad as well as incursions by Chadian armed forces into Sudan. 

Some Chadian rebels have expressed fears that the European force will help prop up Chadian President Idriss Deby Itno, an ally of Paris. However, French Foreign Minister Bernard Kouchner said the EU mission was solely to protect displaced refugees, referring to the final document, which emphasises that the EU forces will operate in a 'neutral, impartial and independent manner'. 

The issue of maintaining neutrality was also raised by the Greens in the European Parliament. Frithjof Schmidt, the Green vice-chair of the EP's Development Committee, described the difficulty of doing so in "a situation close to civil war, with the French military currently supporting Chad's President Déby". 

Schmidt called the mission "questionable" and "misguided": "The peacekeeping force is supposed to protect the refugees from Darfur in Chad but large sections of the border region between Chad and Sudan, where the protection is most urgently needed, fall outside the remit of the operation. […] This is an absurd situation".

According to the UN, roughly 200,000 civilians in Sudan's Darfur region have been killed, with more than two million forced to flee their homes since 2003, when the violent conflict between the Arabic-speaking Islamist government in Khartoum and mostly Christian and animist black rebels started. 

The conflict was fuelled by several factors - the scarcity of resources, tribal conflicts and a feeling among Darfurians of marginalisation and exclusion from the profits of Sudan's oil.