The negotiations had been due to resume on Tuesday following the LRA's declaration of a unilateral ceasefire last week, but the rebels said they would not meet the government delegation until Kampala reciprocated.

"We are not going to resume face-to-face talks with the government unless it declares a unilateral ceasefire like we did," LRA spokesman Obonyo Olweny told AFP at the venue for the talks in southern Sudan.

"It is only by declaring the ceasefire that we can know they are serious about the peace talks," he said, adding that the rebel team would not drop its demand unless instructed to by the LRA high command.

"We are not ready to meet unless the LRA leadership tells us otherwise," Olweny said after the delegation met with chief mediator, Riek Machar, the vice president of autonomous southern Sudan.

The rebel demand threw the resumption of the on-again, off-again talks that began on July 14 into jeopardy as Uganda has repeatedly said a ceasefire can come as part of a comprehensive peace accord in the east African country.

Ugandan officials have accused the LRA of using previous ceasefires to re-group, re-arm and recruit new fighters but the head of Kampala's delegation to the negotiations gave no indication as to what the government would do.

"We came here for the talks and they have an agenda and we shall follow that agenda," Interior Minister Rukahana Rugunda told AFP, apparently referring the next item on the docket, which is a cessation of hostilities agreement.

"As far as we are concerned, the reason the talks have not started yet is because the LRA delegation is not complete," he said. "When the LRA delegation is complete, we shall start the talks."

Kampala's delegation to the talks had returned to Juba, the capital of southern Sudan, late on Monday expecting a restart in the talks after several hitches, including the refusal of senior LRA commanders to attend.

LRA supremo Joseph Kony and his deputy, Vincent Otti, have rejected appeals to participate because they have been charged with war crimes by the International Criminal Court and fear arrest.

Early last week, a frustrated Machar abandoned a meeting with LRA leaders on the border between Sudan and the Democratic Republic of Congo, where they are holed up, because Kony and Otti again refused his entreaties.

Machar later dropped the demand after Uganda said the rebels' absence would not derail the talks.

Tens of thousands of people have been killed and some two million displaced in northern Uganda since the LRA took leadership of a regional rebellion among the Acholi ethnic minority in 1988.

Kony, a self-proclaimed prophet and mystic who says he speaks directly to God, purports to be fighting to replace Ugandan President Yoweri Museveni's government with one based on the Biblical Ten Commandments.

But the LRA has become better known for atrocities, particularly the kidnapping of an estimated 25,000 children -- girls for sex slaves and boys for fighters.

The United Nations and relief agencies describe the conflict as one of the world's worst humanitarian crises.

Numerous previous attempts to negotiate a peace deal between Museveni's government and the rebels have failed, with each side accusing the other of sabotage.

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