The government of Chadian President Idriss Deby and four rebel groups are set to sign a new peace accord at a time when inter-ethnic fighting has flared and the government has declared a new state of emergency in three regions.

"The government is debating the situation of insecurity in the east of the country which is becoming worse by the day", said government spokesman Hourmadji Moussa Doumgor.

President Deby issued a decree on 16 October imposing a state of emergency for 12 days in Chad’s two eastern regions, Ouaddaï and Wadi Fira, as well as in the BET (Borkou-Ennedi-Tibesti) Region in Chad’s north. Officials said the state of emergency may be extended beyond the 12 days.

Also on 16 October the town of Abeche, the main hub for relief organisations working in the east, came under a 6.30 pm curfew by order of the governor of Ouaddaï.

“We are guessing this is related to state of emergency,” Eliane Duthoit the
head of the UN office for the coordination for humanitarian affairs told IRIN. “We had been expecting that the conflict would heat up now with the end of the rainy season and that is what we seem to be seeing.”

The government lost control of Abeche to one rebel group in November 2006.

Yet despite the state of emergency, a senior government official who did not want to be named told IRIN that an agreement had been reached in Libya, Tripoli, between the government, represented by the minister of state and infrastructure Adoum Younousmi and four main rebel leaders.

These are Timane Erdimi of the rebel Rassemblement des forces pour le changement or RFC, Mahamat Nouri of the rebel Union des forces pour la démocratie et le développement (UFDD), Acheikh Ibn Oumar of the rebel UFDD-Fondamentale and Hassan Aldineidji of the Concorde nationale tchadienne or CNT.

“An official signing ceremony will take place soon in Libya in the presence of a number of heads of state to make the document public,” the government source said.

The news comes two days after the European Union agreed to send some 3,000 troops on a UN-authorized peacekeeping mission to eastern Chad and neighbouring Central African Republic in mid-November.

But Duthoit said it is possible that government and rebel forces may yet seek gain territory ahead of the EU deployment.

Eastern Chad is embroiled in at least three types of armed conflicts: one is a spill over from the neighbouring Darfur region of Sudan; another is an internal conflict between the government and various Chadian rebel groups and the third is between local communities in the east, although experts say all three conflicts are interconnected.

UFDD rebel leader Mahamat Nouri is quoted by local Chadian media as saying that the soon-to-be announced peace agreement will only bring “partial peace”, despite his having agreed to sign the document. “The war will still continue,” he reportedly said.

Government spokesman Doumgor also stressed that the war will continue, particularly on the border with Sudan. “A definitive solution has not yet been found and the inter-communal fighting there continues as well, with many people being killed," he said.

At least 20 people have been killed in the eastern region of Tama since 12 October according to Radio France International.