The position was reached after a diplomatic push by presidents Mwai Kibaki of Kenya, Yoweri Museveni of Uganda, Salva Kiir of the semi-autonomous region of south Sudan and retired Kenyan president Daniel arap Moi.

Moi, Kenya's special peace envoy to Sudan, met Museveni on Monday regarding the weekend initiative in Kenya, which chairs the Inter-Governmental Authority on Development (IGAD).

"They agreed that IGAD countries should join hands and resolve the problems facing the implementation of the Comprehensive Peace Agreement (CPA)," Moi's spokesman Lee Njiru told AFP after the Kampala meeting.

"They agreed to plan an urgent summit to resolve the Sudanese crisis," he said, adding that a date would be announced later.

The IGAD, comprising Djibouti, Ethiopia, Kenya, Somalia, Sudan and Uganda, led world efforts in mediating a 2005 accord that halted a 21-year conflict in the south which claimed 1.5 million lives and displaced four million people.

The threatened accord was reached after an 11-year convoluted process that was launched by Moi with support from Western powers and the United Nations.

Kiir, first vice president in Sudan's national unity government, and his Sudan Peoples Liberation Movement pulled out of Khartoum in September on the grounds that the implementation of the CPA had stalled.

His key gripes were the withdrawal of the north's troops from oil fields in the south, the demarcation of the north-south frontier and a resolution on the status of the disputed oil-rich Abyei region.

The move sparked fears of an unravelling of the accord that ended Africa's longest-running and most intractable conflict. A series of consultations has failed to resolve the crisis, deepening mistrust between the erstwhile foes.

The war which created one of Africa's most severe refugee crisis has sown the seeds for insurgency in other parts of Sudan.

The planned IGAD summit comes two days after President Omar al-Beshir ordered the reopening of auxiliary training camps in Sudan to prepare for war, a call that drew warnings from diplomats.

"It is a very dangerous call," said a Kenyan official, adding that IGAD states had mounted a diplomatic push to avoid fresh unrest in Africa's largest nation.

In addition, Kibaki has been in contact with Beshir, his office announced.

Kiir's talks with Kibaki and Moi on Saturday were held on his way home from the United States where he met President George W. Bush -- a visit criticised by Khartoum.

In Washington, Kiir said the CPA which ended the war between the Muslim north and mainly Christian and animist south was staggering "like a drunken person" but had not yet collapsed.

The ex-rebels have vowed to stay out of the unity government until the accord has been fully implemented.

Despite the stalemate, the feuding sides have pledged they will refrain from war.

Sudan was at war between independence in 1956 and 1972 when regional and Church leaders mediated a deal in Addis Ababa. But lapses in its implementation brought the foes back to war in 1983, wreaking destruction mainly in southern Sudan.

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