Security Council hears Chad complaint against Libya, takes no action.

At a meeting on 19 November, the Security Council considered a complaint from Chad regarding the "serious" situation prevailing in that country, "the northern part of which has been occupied by neighbouring Libya".

Seven speakers participated in the debate. The Council adjourned without a draft resolution having been tabled.

Mahamat Ali Adoum (Chad) said in a 14 November letter to the Council President (S/18456) that in addition to the "flagrant and inadmissible occupation" of 550,000 square kilometres of Chad's northern region, "perpetual interference" in Chad's internal and external affairs, and "repeated acts of aggression, destabilization and terrorism" in Chad, "the terrorist and expansionist Tripoli regime" had escalated. the war by "embarking on a systematic and collective massacre of the innocent civilian populations in the occupied zone".

In a 13 November memorandum annexed to the letter, Chad claimed that people in the "occupied zone" the Prefecture of Borkou-Ennedi-Tibesti - had "risen up against the occupier". Libya's reaction had been "brutal and savage", it stated. There had been "collective massacres" "populations" had been deported: palm plantations had been set on fire, and cattle had been decimated. The area was a "wasteland". Those who had managed to escape from "this hell" had found temporary refuge in the mountains, but they were doomed to slow death there - from hunger, thirst and exposure and from the "manhunt carried on by the occupier", Chad said.

Those "barbarous, savage and genocidal crimes" of the "Libyan occupier against the defenceless civillan populations" had led Chad to bring the serious situation before the international community so that it could exercise pressure on the Libyan regime "to induce it to call a halt and to withdraw its occupation troops from Chadian territory without delay", it concluded.

Debate

Mr. Adoum (Chad) said his country was still suffering from "all the subversive, destabilizing machinations, acts of aggression and expansionist designs of the terrorist Colonel Qaddafi". But Chadian patriots, under President Hissein Habre's enlightened leadership, were struggling to defend their homeland. The Libyan army was committing "indescribable atrocities" in northern Chad. For several weeks civilians of Borkou-Ennedi-Tibesti had been the innocent targets of "Qaddafi's Terrorist regime". Attacking on land and from the air, the occupation forces had indiscriminately destroyed, by intensive bombardment, towns, villages and palm plantations. They had also poisoned water holes.

Those "abominable acts" had been committed by "a Qaddafi at bay, a Qaddafi who is desperately trying to become the absolute master of Chad". In the occupied territory and in Libya itself, Chadians had been arbitrarily arrested, ill-treated, persecuted and sent to "concentration camps" to be forcibly recruited into the "unhappily named Islamic Legion, Qaddafi's destabilization force". While the Tripoli regime had refused to cooperate in the work of the Organization of African Unity's ad hoc committee on the Chad-Libyan dispute, Chad was ready to co-operate.

"Qaddafi has entered upon the active phase of his new plan, which is to become the absolute master of the occupied zone, by eliminating all resistance and opposition, in order to conquer all the rest of Chad unhindered," he said. But Chadians in the occupied zone were turning the "occupier's weapons against him". Five million Chadians were capable of getting along with each other and living in peace within internationally recognized frontiers "if Qaddafi ceases his machiavellian scheme to dominate Chad".

Ali A. Treiki (Libyan Arab Jamahiriya) said his country had no wish to intersal in Chad's internal affairs. The scenario the Council was examining was designed to divert attention from the question of American aggression against Libya. It was also designed to discredit the Jamahiriya and to obtain further support for Hissein Habre and legitimize his regime, which did not control Chad, which was not recognized by Chadians and which relied primarily on "mercenary and colonialist forces". Those who were "so interested" in Chad today had not furnished that country any support other than means of destruction, while Libya had provided support and assistance to it because of the spiritual, cultural, geographic, ethnic and historical ties between the two peoples.

The Jamahiriya, he said, had withdrawn all its forces from Chad when asked to do so by its legitimate Government, but it had also returned to assist that legitimate Government, which was recognized by the OAU, when that Government had requested it. The continued tribal strife in Chad and the continued presence of colonial and mercenary forces in Chad, along with the intervention of French and American colonial Powers in Chad, could only complicate the problem. The Jamahiriya respected Chad's territorial integrity. It wanted to achieve Chad's national reconciliation, and was ready to discuss the establishment of a government of national reconciliation in that country and to discuss with it any matter it wanted to.

"Habre's friends", he said, were the United States, "this advocate of peace and freeedom, which it is defending in Nicaragua, Grenada, South Africa and occupied Palestine; and that other peace-loving State, France", which is "burdened as it is with a legacy of colonialism and exploitation", he said. Intervention by the United States and France could only impede the OAU's activities. The Jamahiriya would cooperate with the OAU Chairman in his endeavours to bring Chadians together.

Also speaking in the debate were Council members from France, the United States, the USSR, Congo and Zaire.