Sudan has agreed to attend African Union-mediated talks in Ethiopia intended to reach a negotiated end to the crisis in Darfur, Foreign Minister Mustafa Osman Ismail said yesterday. "Our position is to cooperate fully with the African Union ..." The AU talks are scheduled for July 15. The AU made Darfur a top item on its agenda during meetings in Addis Ababa this week. One official said the war in western Sudan's could be a litmus test for the two-year-old organization's ability to resolve conflicts in Africa.

But despite pressure from the AU, the United Nations and the United States, the path to peace in Darfur remains difficult. Two rebel groups that took up arms against the government last year - the Justice and Equality Movement (JEM) and the Sudan Liberation Movement (SLM) - say that they will not negotiate unless the government first disarms its own marauding Arab militias, knows as Janjaweed, which loot and burn African villages in a campaign of ethnic cleansing.