KHARTOUM, Sept 2 (IslamOnline & News Agencies) - Hours after Southern rebels of the Sudan People's Liberation Army (SPLA) captured the key government garrison town of Torit, the Sudanese government Monday, September 2, 2002, announced it "suspended" peace talks with the rebels, and ordered the army to mobilize to recapture lost ground.

On Sunday, September 1, SPLA spokesman Yasser Armane said the rebels drove government forces out of the town in Eastern Equatoria province, at 1:20 p.m. (1020 GMT).

Sudanese government forces confirmed they withdrew from the town but pledged to recapture it, in an official statement released in Khartoum.

Torit is one of the biggest towns in Eastern Equatoria along with Kapoeta which fell to the rebels in early June.

"SPLA forces forced back the government forces that were attacking our positions outside Torit and were able to capture the town," Armane told Agence France-Presse (AFP).

For his part, Sudanese Foreign Minister Mustafa Ismail told reporters in Egypt that the peace talks held in Machakos, Kenya, will only resume when the SPLA stops military operations.

"The Sudanese delegation will suspend today the talks because of the atmosphere created by the recent military operations," he said, AFP reported.

The "occupation of Torit," a key government garrison town in southern Sudan captured Sunday by the SPLA, "is unacceptable," added Ismail, who is in Cairo to attend a meeting of Arab Foreign Ministers Wednesday.

"All the capacity of the state and the people will be used in military operations" to take back the land seized by the rebels since the signature of a preliminary peace accord with the rebels on July 20 in Machakos, he said.

In parallel to Ismail's announcement, Sudan's military high command said that it ordered a general mobilization of troops to combat the SPLA following the loss of Torit.

"We have lost a battle but not the war," armed forces spokesman General Mohamed Beshir Suleiman said in remarks broadcast by state radio.

He vowed that the army "after mobilizing all its troops, will escalate the war in all zones of fighting."

"We will no longer be committed to so-called self-restraint, and our forces will fight until Torit is restored and will move forward to liberate every span of the homeland from the dirt of the rebellion," Suleiman said.

He accused the rebels of exploiting the "tranquility" prevailing due to the talks in Machakos, Kenya.

He said the high command has already begun sending large reinforcements to the war zone. Troops, accompanied by Popular Defense fighters, were late Sunday flown to Juba, the main city in southern Sudan, preparing for a counterattack to retake Torit.

Suleiman said troops managed to drive back "two waves of assaults on the town, destroyed five tanks and killed many rebels" on Saturday and Sunday.

The SPLA responded to Khartoum's mobilization order with clearly stating its determination to fight off any attempt to retake Torit.

"General mobilization - this is their problem, we are not concerned," said Samson Kwaje, an SPLA spokesman, from Machakos. "But we shall retaliate, especially if they try to take Torit back," he added.

Khartoum state radio accused the rebels of escalating military operations to modify the terms of the July 20 accord that aims end the 19-year civil war which claimed nearly two million lives.

The SPLA wants to enlarge the area of southern Sudan that will be covered by the self-rule regime agreed on July 20, Khartoum radio charged.

The SPLA "started changing the agenda of the negotiations by calling for annexing Abyei and Ingasana to the south, with the knowledge that the Machakos (accord) specified the southern boundaries as those of the three southern provinces as at independence on 1 January, 1956," the radio added.

It called on the Machakos talks' sponsors, the Inter-Governmental Authority on Development (IGAD) Secretariat, to press the rebels into "reverting to the Machakos Protocol as the foundation of the negotiations."

The government and the SPLA kicked off on August 12 a second round of talks in Machakos to thrash out the modalities of the July 20 preliminary accord.

Under the July agreement, the south will enjoy six years of self-rule, before deciding in a referendum whether it wants to secede or remain part of Sudan, dominated by the Arab and Muslim north.