Doubts remain over Darfur force

Alpha Oumar Konare (L) and Ban Ki-moon chaired the talks

Talks on Darfur at the UN have ended with disagreement over the deployment of peacekeepers in the troubled Sudanese region.

Sudan insists that there are more than enough African troops to deploy, but UN and African Union leaders said there were still unresolved technical issues.

Correspondents say not all African troops meet UN standards.

Meanwhile a senior US official hinted at sanctions for rebel leaders refusing to go to October's Libya peace talks.

UN Secretary General, Ban Ki-moon co-chaired the meeting with the chairman of the African Union, Alpha Oumar Konare.

They also discussed increasing humanitarian assistance to Darfur.

Sudanese objections

Participants included the foreign ministers of Sudan, Congo, Egypt, Gabon, France, Ghana and Rwanda, as well as US and UK ministers, the EU's Javier Solana and Arab League Secretary General Amr Moussa.

More than 26,000 AU and UN troops are due to be deployed to Darfur by early next year in an attempt to bring an end to the four-year conflict.

The Sudanese government agreed to this force on the condition that it would be predominantly African.

But the BBC's Laura Trevelyan at the UN says that although more than enough African countries have agreed to contribute troops, not all of them meet the UN standards.

Attempts to find non-African countries have run into objections from the Sudanese, and to some extent the AU.

The Sudanese Foreign Minister, Lam Akol, told reporters there were enough African troops to do the job.

"Everybody recognises that this is just the beginning of the hard part - deployment and peacemaking," said Lord Malloch Brown, the UK's minister of state for Africa.

The meeting was also set to prepare for peace talks on 27 October between the Sudanese government and rebel groups in the Libyan capital Tripoli.

US Deputy Secretary of State John Negroponte said measures could be taken against rebel leaders who refused to attend.