The African Union (AU) said Wednesday at the end of the third day of peace talks on Sudan's Darfur in Abuja, capital of Nigeria, that it would finalize a protocol on security after meeting with all sides to the 20-month conflict.  

"Tonight, since we have received inputs from all sides on security issue, we shall revise our draft and prepare a new document to be submitted to the parties," said El-Ghassim Wane, a top AU official to the talks.

The disagreement on the sensitive security issue has led to the collapse of the first round of peace talks, which ran between Aug.23 and Sept. 17 in Abuja.

"When we submitted the security protocol at the last round, a number of provisions were agreed upon while some were rejected," said Ghassim, adding "what we did was to press the parties on those issues not agreed upon."

He said that the political issue involving power and wealth sharing shall be discussed Thursday immediately after the settlement of the security issue.

Clashes in Sudan's Darfur flared up in February 2003, and has so far caused thousands of deaths and forced about one million to flee to neighboring Chad or to be internally displaced.

(Xinhua News Agency October 28, 2004)