Chadian President and Russian Foreign Minister Discuss Enhancing Bilateral Relations

By Xinhua 

June 7, 2024

A Russian delegation led by Foreign Minister Sergei Lavrov paid an official visit to Chad Wednesday to strengthen bilateral friendship and cooperation.

During the visit, Lavrov and Chadian President Mahamat Idriss Deby Itno discussed the “rich and fruitful bilateral cooperation and the prospects for its expansion and strengthening,” Chad’s presidency said in a statement late Wednesday.

“Russia has demonstrated its firm desire through its head of diplomacy to support Chad,” the statement said.

Chad and Russia will cooperate in the areas of development and security, Lavrov told a press conference in N’Djamena, the capital of Chad.

“We are developing cooperation in the field of security. Chad is interested in this, given that terrorist threats still persist in this region, which are primarily associated with the destruction of Libyan statehood in 2011, and this was the main source of those terrorist extremist manifestations that now persist in the Sahara-Sahel zone, in West Africa, and other parts of the continent,” Lavrov said.

Lavrov’s visit to Chad was the last in a tour of several African countries, including Guinea, the Republic of the Congo and Burkina Faso.