Sudan says undecided on UN troops in Darfur

KHARTOUM, May 26 (Reuters) Sudan said today it had yet to decide whether to accept UN troops in its violent Darfur region but had agreed to the first step of letting a joint U N-African Union planning team begin work within days.

After three days of talks, top UN troubleshooter Lakhdar Brahimi and senior peacekeeping official Hedi Annabi convinced Sudan to accept Security Council demands that the technical team - the first step towards sending troops - begin work.

''I have read the text which Lakhdar Brahimi presented at the news conference and I can confirm that Brahimi's statement is correct,'' presidential advisor Mustafa Osman Ismail told reporters.

Brahimi said the joint AU and UN team would arrive within days.

They would hold talks in Khartoum before going to Darfur to assess requirements for a ''possible transition'' from African Union peacekeeping forces to UN troops.

Some 7,000 AU troops have been monitoring a shaky ceasefire in Darfur, but they are poorly equipped and under-funded and the U N Security Council passed a resolution this month calling for UN peacekeepers to take over.

Foreign Minister Lam Akol had said earlier Sudan had not accepted the assessment mission.

Tens of thousands have been killed and more than 2 million forced from their homes during three years of rape, killing and looting in Darfur which the United States calls genocide.

The government denies the charge but the International Criminal Court is investigating alleged war crimes in the region.

Khartoum had initially rejected the deployment of UN peacekeeping troops in Darfur, saying it would cause an Iraq-like quagmire which would attract jihadi militants.

But it began to soften its stance after signing a peace deal on May 5 with the main rebel group. It had also been under intense international pressure to allow the UN troops in.

Government officials denied that they had caved into pressure by agreeing to the assessment team. ''We were clear that we will not respond to any threat,'' Ismail said.

''The (UN) role has not been decided yet,'' he said. ''Will it be a humanitarian role, one of monitoring the ceasefire, a role of peacekeeping?'' He said the government's position would emerge only after the assessment team held talks with the government in Khartoum.

No date had been set for the mission's arrival, he added.

Around 10,000 UN soldiers are already monitoring a separate peace deal in Sudan's south. Brahimi said the Darfur UN mission would be an extension of that force.

REUTERS SHR BST1951