(Adds Sudan comment paragraph 7)

By Moumine Ngarmbassa

N'DJAMENA, March 5 (Reuters) - The European Union's military force in Chad is sending a team to Sudan to recover a body which officials there believe is that of a French soldier killed after he strayed over the border, the EU force said on Wednesday.

If the soldier is confirmed dead, it will be the first fatal casualty suffered by the EU force (EUFOR) since it started deploying in late January on a U.N.-backed mission to protect refugees and civilians in conflict-torn eastern Chad.

The French special forces soldier went missing on Monday after he and a colleague accidentally crossed the Sudanese border in a vehicle near Tissi in the remote region near the Chad, Sudan and Central African Republic frontiers.

They were fired on by Sudanese troops. The other French soldier was wounded but was able to rejoin EU forces. France and the EU have apologised to Sudan for the frontier violation.

EUFOR spokesman Lieutenant-Colonel Patrick Poulain said Sudanese authorities had informed EU officials that their forces had found a body in the area where the clash took place. The body was being transported to the Sudanese capital Khartoum.

"We're in the process of organising a delegation for the identification of the body in Khartoum," he told Reuters.

Ali al-Sadig, a spokesman for Sudan's Foreign Ministry, confirmed the body was in Khartoum and said the French would "confirm whether it is the missing soldier or not".

Monday's incident is embarrassing for EUFOR.

Its mission in Chad does not include trying to secure the long, porous Chad-Sudan frontier, and much less confronting Sudanese troops. The force's mandate is to protect some half a million Sudanese refugees and Chadian civilians who have fled violence spilling over from Sudan's Darfur region.

"It's unfortunate this happened now, but one of the goals of this reconnaissance is precisely to check out the terrain, especially the frontier, because the maps are rather imprecise," Poulain told Reuters by telephone.

He said the EU soldiers' crossing into Sudan had been accidental. It had occurred in a rugged bush area with no clear demarcation between the converging frontiers of Chad, Sudan and Central African Republic.

INTERLOCKING CONFLICTS

One of the patrol vehicles, which Poulain said carried EUFOR markings, crossed into Sudan without realising it. "It was halted by Sudanese forces and when the others in the patrol came to rescue it, they came under fire," Poulain said.

The French soldier wounded in the clash found his way back to Chadian territory, while the other went missing. His body was thought to be the one recovered by the Sudanese forces.

Some analysts have questioned whether the EU force has the size and capacity to carry out its protection mission without getting sucked into Chad and Sudan's interlocking conflicts.

Experts estimate some 200,000 people have been killed since 2003 in Sudan's western Darfur region that borders with Chad. The Darfur conflict pits Sudanese government forces and allied militia against local rebels opposed to Khartoum's rule.

The violence has spilled over into Chad, where hundreds have been killed in related ethnic and political violence, including a campaign by rebels to topple Chadian President Idriss Deby.

Critics of the EU mission in Chad have already questioned its neutrality, because more than half of its troops are being provided by France, which already has soldiers and planes based in the central African oil producer.

French military intelligence and logistics support last month helped Deby fight off the rebel attack on the capital N'Djamena. Chad accuses Sudan of backing the rebels, a charge denied by Khartoum. (For full Reuters Africa coverage and to have your say on the top issues, visit: http://africa.reuters.com/) (Additional reporting by Pascal Fletcher and Nick Tattersall in Dakar and Alaa Shahine in Khartoum; Writing by Pascal Fletcher)

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