Chad ? The U.N. chief won Chad’s backing for a Darfur peace conference during a visit Friday to this poverty-stricken central African nation that has become home to tens of thousands of refugees fleeing the conflict in neighboring Sudan.

President Idriss Deby, speaking to reporters after his talks with U.N. Secretary-General Ban Ki-moon, added that he had discussed hosting a preliminary meeting for Darfur rebels before the peace conference set to start Oct. 27 in Libya. The failure of Darfur’s fractured rebel movements to act in concert has stymied previous efforts to end the four-year war in Sudan’s Darfur.

More than 200,000 people have died and 2.5 million have been uprooted since ethnic African rebels in Darfur took up arms against the Arab-dominated Sudanese government in 2003, accusing it of decades of neglect. Sudan’s government is accused of retaliating by unleashing a militia of Arab nomads known as the janjaweed – a charge it denies.