By KUNA
Paris : French President Nicolas Sarkozy will make a whistle stop call in Chad Wednesday for a few hours en route to a three-day official visit to South Africa, Sarkozys office said late Tuesday.
The French leader leaves Paris Wednesday afternoon and will meet later that day with Chadian President Idriss Deby, whom he has supported against a rebel coup attempt several weeks ago.
France and Chad have a number of bilateral agreements, among them an intelligence and logistical and maintenance agreement for the Chadian military, but France says it did not take direct part in the combat that repulsed the rebels from the Chadian capital, Ndjamena, on February 2-3.
The rebel offensive almost overthrew Deby, who accused Sudan of supplying the rebels. France said that the rebel columns did come from Sudan but declined to identify their source of support.
Sudan, in turn, accuses Deby of fomenting trouble in the rebellious Darfur zone, where civilians are paying a high price for the fighting between government forces and militias and several rebel groups.
Estimates put the death toll at over 200,000 civilians in the five years of fighting, while well over two million have been displaced.
Chad has accepted hundreds of thousands of refugees into the east of the country and France has been a driving force behind the establishment of a European Union force of 3,700 troops to protect the Sudanese refugees.
Debys support for the French objectives have, no doubt, been instrumental in obtaining him backing from Paris, backing some say has gone beyond the agreements in place.