ADDIS ABABA, June 30, 2004 (dpa) -- African foreign ministers Wednesday opened talks to prepare for next week's summit, hearing an appeal for help the Sudanese government disarm militiamen in Darfur, western Sudan.

Alpha Oumar Konare disclosed that a meeting had been called for Friday in N'Djamena, Chad, at which all parties involved would take part.

The aim was to facilitate implementation of ceasefire agreements signed in April in Chad and at the AU Commission in Addis Ababa earlier this month.

He said the situation in Darfur was "very grave, with the worsening humanitarian situation still the concern of the African Union and the international community".

Opening the 5th session of the AU Executive Council, which is to prepare the agenda for the 6-8 July summit, Konare said Darfur and other trouble spots in Africa would dominate the agenda.

The meeting on Darfur scheduled for Friday would be attended by the governments of Sudan and Chad, the two rebel groups and all the militias operating in western Sudan as well as the AU.

Also present would be the head of the Ceasefire Commission appointed earlier this month to supervise some 120 African observers whom the AU had deployed to monitor the ceasefire.

The N'Djamena meeting would be devoted to the "urgent task" of disarming the militiamen, getting aid to western Sudan and the refugees in neighbouring Chad, and arranging a return home of the internally displaced.

Their number has been estimated at about one million, and those who sought refuge in Chad at about 200,000, according to UN and international humanitarian agencies working in the area.

Konare said the Sudanese government needed help to implement a recent decision to restore peace and bring to an end the wanton killings and starvation faced by the internally displaced.

He mentioned the Democratic Republic of Congo (DRC), Burundi and Cote d'Ivoire as other trouble spots which would be considered by the Executive Council and the Assembly of the AU.

He said the DRC should be assisted to succeed in its transitional government, as was happening in Burundi, while the government of President Gbango of Cote d'Ivoire deserved help to maintain the peace process, to avert the disintegration of the country.

In a related development, the UN World food programme (WFP) announced Wednesday night from Addis Ababa that it had started an airlift of enriched food from the Ethiopian capital earlier in the day to North and South Darfur "to help feed the most vulnerable among one million people uprooted from their homes by conflict".

Two chartered cargo planes would make 44 trips to Nyala in South Darfur and El Fasher in North Darfur to transport 2,000 metric tons of micronutrient-rich Famix flour - enough to feed some 300,000 people for one month, the WFP said in a statement.

"The food aid was ordered by WFP and produced at three factories near Addis Ababa at a cost of some 827,000 dollars," it said.

"Without this enriched food, the lives of thousands of children, pregnant and lactating women are at risk due to widespread severe malnutrition in the conflict-ridden region," the statement quoted Abnezer Ngowi, WFP's Acting Country Director in Ethiopia, as saying.