Word: chadli
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Dates: during 2000-2009
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French President Nicolas Sarkozy likes to adopt a Travis Bickle "you-talkin-to-me?" swagger when seeking to intimidate political rivals, protesters and the French media. But it remains to be seen whether Sarkozy's snarl will prompt a retreat by hardened rebel fighters in Chad. Amid a lull in the battle for control of the Chadian capital of N'Djamena on Tuesday, Sarkozy responded to rebel threats of renewed violence by warning, "If France must do its duty, it will - let no one doubt that...
...would accept a cease-fire if President Idriss Déby , a longtime ally of France (and lately, also of the U.S.), left office and cleared the way for their takeover. "You take power through elections, not otherwise," Sarkozy warned, indicating that the 1,400 French troops stationed in Chad could step off the sidelines if the rebels push their luck. The United Nations Security Council has urged all member states to back President Déby's government in the face of the rebel onslaught. "If Chad has been the victim of an aggression," Sarkozy added, "France would have...
...leaders of the political opposition. But Déby is also an important regional ally in the U.S. "war on terror," and his cooperation is essential to the objective of deploying European peacekeeping forces in Darfur. In fact, the rebels forces seeking to oust Déby entered Chad from Sudan, and are widely seen as a proxy force for the Sudanese government, which has openly supported their attempt to oust Déby. The timing of the rebel assault is also widely seen as an attempt to frustrate international efforts to intervene in Darfur...
...initial hours and days of the rebel push into N'Djamena, Paris remained in close phone contact with Déby - at one point offering him asylum in France. But French public statements about the conflict were confined to assurances that French troops in Chad were involved only in protecting foreign civilians and evacuating expatriates, and that bilateral security accords between the two countries did not require France to intervene to save an embattled regime...
...part of wider patchwork of cross-border African conflicts, some are intimating threats of additional peacekeeping operations as a means of making life harder on troublemakers in the region. "We are not involved in this war," French Foreign Minister Bernard Kouchner said as he welcomed people airlifted from Chad to Paris Monday. "For now, there's no change in that. But if there's a [United Nations] Security Council resolution, or if there was another suggestion [for a more active role] during an African Union summit...