Tripoli - Sudan and Chad are to exchange ambassadors in two weeks, a committee assigned to restore peace between the countries announced Thursday.

The committee, which comprises representatives from Libya, Sudan and Chad, said in a statement that both countries are now committed to promote confidence and trust.

At the meeting in Tripoli, the committee also recommended accelerating the work of observation teams on the border between the two countries.

Beijing/Khartoum  - Nine Chinese oil workers have been kidnapped by an unknown group in Sudan, state media said on Monday.

The nine workers were seized at an oil field in Southern Kordofan State close to Sudan`s strife-torn Darfur region, the official Xinhua news agency quoted Chinese embassy officials as saying.

No group has claimed responsibility for kidnapping the workers, who were employees of the China National Petroleum Corporation, the agency reported from Khartoum.

Nairobi/Khartoum  - Sudan has summoned the ambassadors of Kenya and Ethiopia to register a complaint about "illegal" arms shipments to the semi-autonomous south, the Sudanese embassy in Kenya said Tuesday.

Sudan is angry about a shipment of tanks and other military equipment that was allegedly en route to South Sudan through the Kenyan port of Mombasa before being seized by pirates off the coast of Somalia.

Khartoum also said that weapons arrived in South Sudan's capital Juba on Friday aboard an Ethiopian military plane.

Nairobi/Khartoum  - A helicopter contracted by the joint African Union-United Nations Mission in Darfur (UNAMID) has crashed, killing at least two of the occupants, the UN said Monday.

UNAMID spokesman Kemal Saiki said that the helicopter, which was delivering rations to UNAMID bases, had come down near the Kalma refugee camp in Sudan's restive western province.

Two of the occupants were confirmed dead, while the other two were presumed to be trapped inside the wreckage.

There was no information on the nationality of the four.

New York - The year-long crisis in Darfur was discussed Saturday by the foreign ministers of Egypt and Syria in their speeches at the annual UN General Assembly.

Egyptian Foreign Minister Ahmed Abul Gheit called for an international conference to draft a roadmap for the way to unity and stability in Sudan.

Syrian Foreign Minister Walid Al-Moualem demanded that the UN Security Council counteract an arrest warrant for Sudanese President Omar Hassan al-Bashir that has been requested by the chief prosecutor of the International Criminal Court.

The prosecutor Luis Moreno-Ocampo asked the ICC at The Hague in July to issue a warrant to arrest al-Bashir for the killing of Darfurians.

Nairobi - Ugandan rebel group the Lord's Resistance Army (LRA) has denied reports it recently launched attacks and abducted children in both the Democratic Republic of Congo and South Sudan.

"The recent media reports of LRA attacks are fabricated and dangerous imaginations formulated by those bent on stifling the current peace process between Uganda and LRA," rebel spokesman David Nyekorach-Matsanga said in a statement.

The United Nations Children's Fund (UNICEF) on Tuesday demanded the immediate release of 90 schoolchildren it said the LRA had abducted in DR Congo the previous week.

The LRA is notorious for kidnapping children and forcing them to fight or become sex slaves.