Sudan's First Vice-President Ali Osman Mohamed Taha has called on rebel groups in Sudan's western Darfur to join peace talks in Nigeria on June 10 aimed at ending war in the troubled region. "Negotiations will resume in Abuja on 10 June," Taha said in a live debate on Sudanese television on Saturday night, monitored by the BBC. "Once again, I call from here on the various factions in Darfur to come to the next round of talks with a true spirit of concord and settlement in order to end the war," he said. "We are acting sincerely and with a true desire to reach an agreement at the next round in Abuja to take all the political parties with us to enter the national government," he said. Taha was speaking one day after U.N. Secretary-General Kofi Annan arrived in Sudan to see for himself the humanitarian crisis in Darfur region and hold talks with Sudanese officials, Reuters reported. Negotiations between the Khartoum government and the rebels had been due to resume in the Nigerian capital Abuja on May 30, but U.N. envoy Jan Pronk said the two rebel groups in Darfur had delayed the talks and urged them to get "their act together".
