The federal judge in the Unabomber trial has summoned accused killer Theodore Kaczynski to meet him privately before an open hearing in court with prosecutors, the defence and the defendant.

Judge Garland Burrell did not make it clear whether court-appointed defence lawyers would accompany the suspect at Wednesday's meeting, which he said was of a "sensitive nature".

Mr Kaczynski has been arguing with his lawyers - federal defenders Quin Denvir and Judy Clarke - for months about whether to use a "mental defect" defence against charges that he waged a deadly 17-year campaign of terror.

FBI sketch of the Unabomber based on a 1987 sighting

The 55-year-old Harvard-educated former maths professor is accused of mailing bombs that killed two California men.

He also faces a separate charge in New Jersey of murdering an advertising executive there.

In all, the Unabomber suspect is blamed for 16 attacks that also injured 23 people between 1979 and 1995.

The case takes its name from the acronym used by federal investigators to identify their suspect, whose early targets were university professors and airline executives.

Just before opening statements were scheduled to begin in Sacramento, California, on Monday, Mr Kaczynski's surprise request to "revisit the issue" of his lawyers prompted the judge to halt the proceedings for three days, before the jury had been sworn in.

Judge Burrell has promised to try to get the high-profile trial under way on Thursday if he can resolve the dispute.

Legal analysts speculated on Tuesday about the judge's options if he cannot bring Kaczynski around.

At least one analyst said he could bar the defendant from the courtroom and arrange for him to see the trial from an adjacent chamber if he feared Mr Kaczynski would continue to be disruptive.

Theodore Kaczynsk's Montana mountain cabin

The defendant resigned from a professorship at the University of California at Berkeley to become an anti-social, anti-technology recluse in a small mountain cabin near Lincoln, Montana.

Sherri Wood, the librarian in Lincoln who occasionally saw Kaczynski when he was doing research, said he was "a very quiet person" and that people in Lincoln were "real tired" of being asked about him and were not following his trial.

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