paris • African neighbours Chad and Sudan will sign an agreement to end their long-running conflict in Dakar next week, the Senegalese president said here yesterday.

“There will be the signing of a general agreement and an implementation agreement” by the heads of state of Chad and Sudan on March 12, ahead of the Organisation of the Islamic Conference summit, President Abdoulaye Wade said.

“Today both protagonists accepted to come to Dakar... for the mini-summit on the problem of Chad to find a definitive solution,” he said after a meeting with French leader Nicolas Sarkozy.

A Senegalese presidential source said Thursday that UN Secretary General Ban Ki-moon and the current head of the African Union, Tanzanian President Jakaya Kikwete, would be present.

The source said Wade’s envoys had been conducting shuttle diplomacy between Ndjamena and Khartoum, whose regimes accuse each other of aiding their respective rebel movements.

Meanwhile, the body in charge of a vital census in southern Sudan said it will face a serious financial crisis unless the central government delivers delayed cash and approves a larger budget. The census, set to start on April 15 for two weeks, is considered crucial for Sudan's first elections in 2009.