HIGHLIGHTS: Sudan Threatens Retaliation against Eritrean Agression||Khartoum Calls on Opposition to Join Kenya Talks||Opposition Alliance Forces Attack in Eastern Sudan Wasn't Commissioned by Mirghani, Leader of Khatmiyah Religious Group||Khartoum to File Complaint with UN, African Union & Arab League against Eritrea||Government Forces Appear to Be Stumbling in the Battle Field|| STORY: The Sudanese government said it has agreed to resume talks with the rebels, while blaming a ground offensive in eastern Sudan on Eritrea and vowing to retaliate militarily to Asmara's "aggression."

Foreign Minister Mustafa Ismail announced Sudan's return to promising peace talks with southern rebels, broken off a month ago, which had already resulted in a framework agreement for ending the country's 19-year civil war.

"The Sudanese government announces that it has agreed to go back to the negotiations," Ismail told a press conference in Khartoum, confirming Sudan's decision to rejoin the talks in Machakos, Kenya sponsored by a grouping of six eastern African states.

Khartoum "welcomes the announcement by the secretariat of the Inter-Governmental Authority on Development (IGAD) on the resumption of the negotiations" with the southern rebel Sudan People's Liberation Army (SPLA), he said.

On Friday, an IGAD statement said that the Sudanese government would resume talks with the southern rebel Sudan People's Liberation Army (SPLA) on October 14, but Ismail said the government had not been informed of any starting date.

Ismail also said Khartoum and the SPLA would "sign a document in which they commit to cease all hostilities before the talks start."

He said the signing of this document was part of the deal to resume the talks that was brokered by Kenyan mediator on Sudan Lazaro Sumbeiywo, who had talks Thursday here with Sudanese President Omar el-Beshir and was dispatched by IGAD which groups Djibouti, Eritrea, Ethiopia, Kenya, Sudan and Ugandan.

Ismail, meanwhile, called on northern opposition groups, such as the Umma Party and the Democratic Unionist Party (DUP) to join the Kenya talks.

Ismail praised the Umma's political leader, Sadeq al-Mahdi, and Mohammed Osman al-Mirghani, the leader of the DUP and the Khatmiyah religious movement, for having criticised in press statements the fighting this past week in eastern Sudan.

Mirghani, whose party is allied with the SPLA under the umbrella of the National Democratic Alliance (NDA), a broad coalition of armed opposition groups, complained in Friday's edition of the London-based Al-Hayat daily that he was "unaware of this offensive".

SPLA leader John Garang said Thursday that the NDA had captured the government garrisons of Hamashkurb and Shallob and were marching on the main eastern town of Kassala.

Egyptian experts on Sudan said the fighting involved local elements of the DUP acting without Mirghani's permission.

Oddly, Ismail chose to ignore the Garang pronouncement and blamed the fighting, where Khatmiyah followers are predominent, on Eritrean forces alone, and said Sudan will "respond diplomatically, politically and militarily" to Asmara.

Khartoum has also decided to file a complaint with the United Nations Security Council, the African Union and the Arab League "against the Eritrean aggression ... which has been continuing from Thursday till today," he added.

He said the Eritrean army was involved in the offensive claimed by the opposition because it involved "weapons that we have not seen before."

He said Sudanese army positions along a 180 kilometers (112 miles) near the border with Eritrea had come under attack. He also accused Eritrea of harbouring training camps for the rebels and allowing them to set up a radio station.

The latest fighting and return to negotiations comes as the government has stumbled on the battlefield. The government pulled out of negotiations being held in Machakos on September 2 to protest the SPLA's capture of the southern key garrison town of Torit.

Khartoum had demanded a nation-wide ceasefire as its price for going back to the talks that aim to finalise the landmark agreement signed in Machakos in July that the United States, Britain and Norway also helped broker.

Despite a mass-mobilisation of soldiers, it appeared Khartoum had suffered further defeats, with the SPLA claiming to have killed more than 1,000 Sudanese soldiers near Torit and the government admitting the shooting down of one of its helicopters.

Under the July accord, the mainly Christian and animist south is to enjoy six years of self-rule, before deciding in a referendum whether it wants to secede or remain part of the Sudanese state dominated by the Muslim north.


PHOTO CAPTION

SPLA soldier. Despite a mass-mobilisation of soldiers, it appeared Khartoum had suffered further defeats, with the SPLA claiming to have killed more than 1,000 Sudanese soldiers near Torit and the government admitting the shooting down of one of its helico