The Sudan People's Liberation Army (SPLA) accused the Khartoum government of violating a 10-minute old truce by attacking its forces in eastern Sudan, and warned the alleged breach would hurt renewed peace talks. "Government forces attacked our forces in eastern Sudan around 1210 local time," or 0910 GMT, SPLA spokesman Yasser Arman said from his offices in the Eritrean capital Asmara, speaking by telephone to AFP in Cairo.

He said the fighting was in Old Rissai, near the Eritrean border, but gave no details on casualties.

Sudanese troops last week bolstered their siege around Old Rissai to recapture it from the SPLA and what it said were Eritrean troops it accused of supporting the rebels on the eastern front. Asmara denies the charge.

"It is the first violation of the truce signed by the SPLA, the Sudanese government and the mediators from IGAD," the Kenyan-based Intergovernmental Authority for Development, Arman said.

Arman warned the attack "will have negative repercussions on the negotiating process" set to resume formally in Kenya following a six-week suspension.

A rebel source told AFP in Nairobi earlier that the ceasefire, agreed Tuesday, "came into force at exactly midday (0900 GMT)."

The ceasefire had been a condition for talks to resume after Khartoum suspended them on September 2, following the SPLA's capture of the garrison town of Torit in the south, which government forces recaptured this month.

The SPLA said the truce was to remain in force until the negotiations are concluded, which will be no later than the end of the year unless both sides agree to an extension, but Khartoum said there was no deadline.

Sudan's top peace adviser Ghazi Salah Eddin Atabani, also said the truce covered "all parts of Sudan," and was applicable as well on northern opposition forces within the National Democratic Alliance (NDA) coalition.

But Atabani on Tuesday hinted the Sudanese army might continue fighting on the eastern front because it was dealing there with an "Eritrean aggression" and not an internal rebellion.

Arman said it was premature to say whether the SPLA would withdraw from the negotiations.

Arman insisted the "truce covers all of Sudan."

"We urge the international community to work so that the (Khartoum) government respect what it signed," he said.

Both sides were Thursday "studying" a draft proposal on power-sharing prepared by mediators before formal peace talks start.

More than two million people have been killed since civil war erupted in Sudan in 1983, and twice that number have been displaced.

At the heart of the conflict is the question of how to share power and resources between the Arab, Islamic government in the north and the secular south, whose inhabitants are mostly animist and Christian.

The sharing of revenue from Sudan's oil reserves, which began to be exported in 1999, will be among the chief points of negotiation, as will the security arrangements in the south during a six-year period of autonomy agreed during an earlier round of talks in Machakos in July.

PHOTO CAPTION

Sudanese Government militiamen pose for a photo before heading out of Khartoum to face SPLA rebels