By Leslie Neuhaus
N'djamena, Chad - President Idriss Deby says the world may have to use force to stabilise Sudan's Darfur area, whose conflict is seen as a threat to neighbouring Chad and the rest of the region.
Deby accused Sudan of wanting to destabilise the region in order to control it.
Sudan has repeatedly rejected Deby's accusations about its alleged role in Darfur and Chad.
The Darfur peace process, meanwhile, has stalled, with both the Sudanese government and Darfur rebels accused by international mediators of doing too little to resolve their three-year-old conflict.
The Sudanese government is accused of responding to an uprising by Darfur rebels by unleashing Arab tribal militias known as Janjaweed to murder and rape civilians and lay waste to villages - a charge it denies.
The conflict has forced hundreds of thousands of Sudanese to flee their homes, many to camps in Chad.
The influx of weapons that has accompanied the fighting adds to the chaos of mass displacement. Chadian rebels have taken advantage of the lack of order, basing themselves in Darfur and last week managing a strike on Deby's capital.
There are also reports that opponents of the government of the Central African Republic, another nation in the region, are gathering in the border area.
And Nigeria, which borders the Central African Republic, has expressed concern it could be destabilised if even more people are displaced by the latest fighting.
"I have repeatedly and strongly suggested to the international community that the Darfur region be stabilised even if by use of force and to be put under UN mandate.
This in turn will help to stabilise Chad," Deby told journalists on Tuesday.
Sudan denies Chadian officials' claims that it backs Chadian rebel groups. It has instead accused Chad of backing Darfur rebels.
The president also said that a call from the US State Department persuaded Chad to withdraw its threat to expel Sudanese refugees in the country by June.
On Friday - the day after a rebel attack on N'Djamena - Deby said that Chad was severing relations with neighbouring Sudan and threatened to expel 200 000 Sudanese refugees in Chad if the international community did not do more to stop what he claimed were Sudanese backed-rebels from destabilising his government before Chadian presidential election scheduled May 3.
UN High Commissioner for Refugees Antonio Guterres said on Monday in Geneva that the Deby had given assurances that his country would abide by international refugee law and not force the Sudanese refugees out.
"We need to resettle the refugees and the internally displaced, because we are running out of time," Deby said on Tuesday without elaborating.
Later on Tuesday, Foreign Minister Ahmad Allam-mi said that a group of Darfur rebels tried to occupy the Sudanese Embassy in N'djamena before Chadian security forced them out.
The members of the Justice and Equality Movement, who included the group's leader, Khalil Ibrahim, were in transit from Darfur to Nigeria for peace talks there, Allam-mi said.
"The government should expel them from Chadian territory for abusing Chadian hospitality and their unacceptable behaviour," Allam-mi said in a statement.
Chad, an arid, landlocked country about three times the size of France, has been racked by violence for most of its history, including more than 30 years of civil war since gaining independence from France in 1960 and various small-scale insurgencies since 1998. - Sapa-AP