African Union hopeful that Darfur peace talks will resume Sunday

Abuja (dpa) - Over a week after the fifth round of peace talks on the Darfur conflict stalled the African Union (AU) mediation team appeared hopeful Thursday that talks would resume this weekend.

A.U. Special Envoy on the peace talks, Dr. Salim Ahmed Salim, told a meeting in Abuja Thursday that he was hopeful talks would start again Sunday.

The meeting is the first of a working group representing all parties to the talks, established to harmonize the positions of the different groups while reducing the hundreds of delegates to a reasonable number.

Parties to the conflict are the government of Sudan, and two rebel groups, the Justice and Equality Movement and the Sudanese Liberation Movement and Army.

Each of the three parties is sending four delegates to Thursday's meeting, while partners like the E.U., the U.N., the Arab League, the U.S., Britain, Norway, The Netherlands, Canada and France have a representative each.

Peace talks facilitators, Nigeria, Libya and Chad have also send a representative each.

The working group was put together after days of separate meetings with all parties did not achieve the desired results.

Salim told the three parties that they had a responsibility to their country and the international community to ensure the success of the ongoing round of talks.

He urged them to ''show greater flexibility as required in the current phase of the talks to enable it to move on and tackle the substantive issues as quickly as possible''.

The parties were expected to make their positions known on the Declaration of Principles - part of which deals with power and wealth sharing, security and human rights - so that a plenary session on substantive issues could begin.

The group has until Friday to harmonize positions so that the plenary session could begin ''hopefully on Sunday'', said Noureddine Mezni, spokesman for the A.U. mediation team. dpa aa sr