Sudan agrees to restore relations with Chad: Senegal

DAKAR (Reuters) - Sudanese President Omar Hassan al-Bashir has agreed to restore diplomatic ties with neighboring Chad, broken off in May after a rebel attack on the Sudanese capital Khartoum, mediator Senegal said on Friday.

Senegal's government announced the move following a meeting in the Senegalese capital Dakar on Thursday between the Sudanese and Chadian foreign ministers and African Union guarantors of a March peace deal between the two feuding neighbors.

Sudan cut diplomatic ties with Chad on May 11, a day after rebels from the west Sudanese region of Darfur attacked the capital Khartoum. Bashir said the attackers were Chadians backed by the Chadian government. Chad denied involvement.

Chad and Sudan have accused each other repeatedly of supporting rebellions in their respective territories since conflict began in Sudan's Darfur region in 2003.

Rebel forces have twice raided Chad's capital N'Djamena in the last two years, most recently in February 2008.

Senegal brokered a peace deal between the two governments at an Organization of the Islamic Conference summit which it hosted the following month, although the deal did little to smooth tense relations between Chad and Sudan or violence on their common border.

The "contact group" that met on Thursday has been following implementation of that peace deal in spite of repeated clashes on both sides of the border.

The group discussed plans to deploy a peace and security force on the Chad-Sudan border and approved a $30.6 million budget. It said technical experts would meet in the second half of August to discuss the logistics and mandate of the force.

A joint U.N.-African Union peacekeeping force has had repeated problems deploying in Darfur to take over from a purely African Union force, while the European Union has around 3,000 troops protecting refugees and aid workers in eastern Chad.

Senegalese President Abdoulaye Wade has taken a lead role in mediating between Chad and Sudan, whose president, Bashir, was charged on Monday by the International Criminal Court prosecutor with masterminding a genocide campaign and killing 35,000 people in Darfur.

Wade said on Thursday that U.S. President George W. Bush warned African leaders at one stage that he could send U.S. troops to Darfur if they did not act to halt what Washington saw as "genocide" there.

(Reporting by Pascal Fletcher and Alistair Thomson; Editing by Matthew Jones)