The french president Nicolas Sarkozy received Tuesday evening in Paris the son of the opposing Chad Ibni Oumar Saleh, unaccounted for since the collapse of the rebel offensive in early February, in N'Djamena.

In a statement, the spokesman for the Elysée, David Martinon, said that discussions with Hicham Oumar Saleh had focused on the international commission of inquiry that the Chadian President Idriss Déby has agreed to establish, at the request of Paris, on disappearances and arrests of opponents.

The french president reiterated on this occasion his wish that the committee "should attach greater importance to the international community," reads a passage in this release.

Saleh, leader of a coalition of opposition parties, and the deputy "southerner" Ngarlejy Yorongar have disappeared since the rebel raid in early February, according to their families and their lawyers, they were arrested on Feb. 3 in their homes by the government army, which the authorities deny.

Yorongar has since resurfaced in Yaounde, the capital of Cameroon, where he started to apply for asylum with European countries.

A third opponent, the former president Lol Mahamat Choua, also stopped at the battle of N'Djamena, was placed under house arrest.

On 27 February, during a brief stopover in N'Djamena on their way to South Africa, Sarkozy had inquired about the fate of the missing or arrested opponents and had obtained his Chadian counterpart agreed to the establishment of an international commission of inquiry on the subject.