(ZAGREB) - Croatia, which hopes to join the European Union soon, said Monday it would participate in a EU force (EUFOR) deployed in the central African state of Chad where tensions remain high along the border with Sudan.

Croatia's Defence Council had "decided to...send 15 members of the armed forces to the European Union's peace mission in Chad at the end of September or in October," said a statement from President Stipe Mesic's office.

The Balkan state of Croatia, once a constituent republic of former Yugoslavia, hopes to join the EU by the end of this decade.

EUFOR, which will eventually number 3,700 troops, began a year-long UN mandate in March to protect refugees from western Sudan's strife-torn Darfur region, as well as people displaced by rebel insurgency in Chad and the northern Central African Republic.

Some 250,000 refugees have flooded into Chad from Darfur over the past five years, with another 190,000 Chadians also driven from their homes by cross-border raids.

The Janjaweed militia, allies of the Sudanese government in the Darfur conflict, have crossed the border and are operating in Chadian villages, according to many accounts.

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