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Central African Republic has protested to Sudan about a cross-border attack by rebels who seized a north-eastern town, the government said on Tuesday of the latest escalation of violence in the conflict-torn region.
Officials in the landlocked former French colony, one of the poorest nations on earth, said the armed group on Monday stormed Birao, more than 800 km (500 miles) northeast of the capital Bangui, after crossing from Sudan at Am Dafok on the border.
Central African Republic, like Chad, has in the past complained of being the victim of the spillover of violence from Sudan's western Darfur region, where political and ethnic conflict has raged since 2003.
A spokesman for the rebel coalition, which claimed the capture of Birao, the UFDR, said its fighters controlled the town on Tuesday and were advancing towards Bangui. The rebels accused President Francois Bozize of "holding the country hostage" and demanded he start talks about power sharing.
"We've taken up arms to restore justice ... we demand the creation of a round-table to debate the problems of the country," UFDR spokesman Captain Abakar Sabone told Reuters by telephone. He said he was speaking from Birao. Central African Republic's government summoned the Sudanese ambassador in Bangui on Monday to ask why the raiders had come from Sudanese territory.
"We condemn this barbarous attack, which came from the territory of a brother nation," presidency spokesman Cyriaque Gonda told Reuters on Tuesday. "We're not accusing Sudan directly ... we're asking for explanations," he added, saying the government did not know the precise identity of the attackers.
In Paris, the French government expressed its support for Bozize's administration and said the attack showed the conflict in Darfur was affecting neighbouring countries. "These events demonstrate once again the importance of including the Central African Republic in any thinking about solving the crisis in Darfur," French Foreign Ministry spokesman Jean-Baptiste Mattei said.
Gonda said Central African Republic's Prime Minister Elie Dote had on Monday asked the UN Security Council in New York to deploy UN peacekeeping troops in the Chad-Central African Republic-Sudan border area to guarantee security.
Sudan's government is refusing to accept the deployment of a UN peacekeeping force in Darfur, already mandated by the Security Council. Humanitarian agencies say this force is the best hope to restore peace to Darfur and the whole region. Rebel spokesman Sabone said 20 government troops were killed in the Birao attack, while the rebels lost two fighters.
But the situation remained confused in the remote north, which borders both Chad and Sudan and is a lawless area where armed raiders regularly loot villages and terrorise civilians. Sabone denied the UFDR, whose name in French means Union of Democratic Forces for Unity, had crossed from Sudan. He said many of the rebel fighters previously served under Bozize, who seized power in March 2003 with the help of armed recruits from Chad. He then held and won elections in 2005.
Humanitarian officials in Bangui said the latest violence in the north would mean more suffering for civilians there. Some 50,000 have sought refuge in southern Chad in recent years.
"I am very worried about the armed groups operating along the border with Darfur ... After 10 years of instability in the Central African Republic, the last thing the population needs is instability spilling in from outside," Toby Lanzer, the UN Humanitarian Co-ordinator in Bangui, told Reuters.

Copyright Reuters, 2006

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