(Adds Sudan remarks at AU, meeting adjourned)

By Michael Georgy

KHARTOUM, April 4 (Reuters) - African Union forces need increased U.N. logistical assistance and more sophisticated defensive weapons to cope with the dangers in Darfur, a top AU official in Sudan said on Wednesday.

Sam Ibok, head of the AU team charged with implementing a peace deal in western Sudan, said the support included planes.

"We need more defensive weapons. AK-47s and the other weapons we have are not enough," he told Reuters.

Ibok said he was not calling for the immediate deployment of U.N. troops to help the AU, a move he said would require the consent of the Khartoum government.

But he said the recent attack on AU forces in Darfur demonstrated their vulnerability. Gunmen attacked five AU troops on Sunday in the deadliest single assault on the African force since it was deployed in 2004.

The five Senegalese soldiers were guarding a water point near the Sudanese border with Chad when they came under fire on Sunday. Four soldiers were killed in the shooting and the fifth died of his wounds on Monday morning.

During a meeting of the AU's Peace and Security Council in Addis Ababa on Wednesday to review a report by investigators into the killings, Sudan blamed the shootings on rebels who have refused to sign a 2006 Darfur peace agreement.

"Sudan appeals to the international community to exercise pressure on the non-signatories of the Darfur peace agreement to cease hostilities and begin the peace process," Sudan's ambassador to the AU, Mohildin Salim, told the council.

He told the meeting Sudan condemned the attacks and would find the culprits: "Collective and decisive action against those who oppose the peace process and try to jeopardise it is the only way to bring such tragedies ... to an end."

The meeting was adjourned until Thursday after the Nigerian force commander, Major-General Luke Aprezi, made a presentation on the attack, AU sources said.

They said there was disagreement between Sudan and AU officials over the report's conclusions and the future of peacekeeping operations in Darfur, which Sudan insists must not be led by a larger U.N. force.

The AU operates an overstretched 7,000-strong force in Darfur, where violence has persisted despite a 2006 peace agreement between the government and one rebel faction.

The latest deaths brought to 15 the number of AU personnel killed in Darfur. A senior Nigerian officer working with the mission has been missing since he was kidnapped in December.

Sudanese President Omar Hassan al-Bashir reiterated on Monday his position that the AU had the main security responsibility for Darfur but said a "dialogue" was under way on other issues.

Sudanese officials recently said they were willing to review U.N. proposals for easing the violence in Darfur but Khartoum has not budged on the main plan to send in 22,500 U.N. soldiers.

Experts estimate that around 200,000 people have been killed and 2.5 million have fled their homes since the conflict flared in 2003, when rebels took up arms against Khartoum, charging it with neglect. The government says only 9,000 people have died.

Last month the new U.N. humanitarian chief, John Holmes, said on a visit to the region that aid efforts in Darfur -- the world's largest -- could collapse if the situation worsened. (Additional reporting by Tsegaye Tadesse in Addis Ababa)

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