Photo: African children playing in an orphanage at Abeche, Chad after being rescued from abduction, 26 October 2007. UN agencies have confirmed that these children have families and parents and not orphans as the French organization that planned to abducted them said.

Most of the 103 African children which a French group had planned to abducted from Chad as orphans said they had families which included at least one close relative, U.N. agencies said on Thursday.

If anything, this episode which has been halted only by a chance constitutes a painful reminder of the infamous Western slave trade and its tragic consequences on Africa and its peoples.

Africa now more than any other time needs to wake up and stop the very causes that may allow criminals such as this French and other Western organization to steal African babies as they did centuries ago.

A joint report by the United Nations children's agency UNICEF, the U.N. refugee agency UNHCR and the International Committee of the Red Cross also said most of the 21 girls and 82 boys aged 1-10 came from villages on the Chad-Sudan border.

A French group calling itself Zoe's Ark was stopped last week from flying the children it described as orphans from Sudan's Darfur region to Europe, where the group said it intended to place them with host families.

Media reports have said that the group is a human trafficking agency and it is selling these innocent children to who pays more money.

Aid workers who interviewed the children at an orphanage in eastern Chad where they are being cared for said most of them come from villages on the Chadian-Sudanese border region.

"Ninety-one of the children referred to a family environment made up of at least one adult person whom they consider as a parent," the U.N.'s Children Fund, the U.N. refugee agency and the Red Cross said in a joint statement.

The French Foreign Ministry and others have cast doubt on the claims by the little-known group that the children were orphans from Darfur, where a conflict has been taking place since early 2003.

The International Committee of the Red Cross and the two U.N. aid agencies said several days of talks with 21 girls and 81 boys aged between 1 and 10 "suggest that 85 of them come from villages in the border region between Chad and Sudan, in the area of Adre and Tine." Adre and Tine are both in Chad.

Interviews continue, the agencies said, to track their families or close relatives.

In Central Africa, meanwhile, Republic of Congo's justice minister said late Wednesday that the country was suspending all international adoptions following the events in Chad.
"The government is taking this as a preventive measure," Justice Minister Emmanuel Aime Yoka said.

Yoka said the Chad incident occurred only a few days after 17 children from the Republic of Congo were adopted by Spanish families. He said the two events were not connected, but said the coincidence of timing led the government to re-examine its policies.

Republic of Congo is taking measures to verify the situation of those children currently in Spain, he said.

Also Thursday, a delegation of senior Sudanese officials led by the Minister of Social Affairs Samia Ahmed Mohammed was to travel to Chad to monitor the interrogations there and steps that will be taken protect children from future abductions.

According to its Web site, Zoe's Ark, founded in 2005 by volunteer firefighter Eric Breteau, announced in April it planned on "evacuating orphans from Darfur." The group launched an appeal for host families and funding.
Established French aid and adoption agencies had raised questions about Zoe's Ark could legally organize adoption of children from Darfur, and alerted French judicial authorities, according to French newspaper reports.

The French Foreign Ministry in August warned families to be careful. Still, some 300 families reportedly signed up to adopt or foster children, and many were waiting at a French airport last week for the children when they heard members of the group had been arrested.

Nine French nationals, seven Spaniards and at least two Chadians were arrested in eastern Chad last week after authorities stopped them from flying the children to Europe.

They are being held on charges of abduction and fraud and face possible forced labor terms if tried and convicted.(news agencies).