(ADDIS ABABA) - The African Union opened talks Friday with the European Union and other international partners on possible sanctions against the regime that seized power in Mauritania in an August 6 coup.

Joining the discussions at AU headquarters in Ethiopia's capital Addis Abeba were representatives of the United Nations, the Francophonie, the Organization of the Islamic Conference and the Arab League.

They came a day after a renewed EU threat to impose "appropriate measures" after Mauritania missed a November 20 deadline to set out proposals to re-establish "constitutional order" in the northwest African nation.

The European Union is Mauritania's biggest aid donor and France, the region's former colonial power, still wields economic influence there. Nevertheless, Nouakchott dismisses the sanction threat.

Mauritania's first democratically-elected president Sidi Ould Cheikh Abdallahi was ousted in the August 6 coup, just hours after he issued a decree firing the military's top brass, including General Mohamed Ould Abdel Aziz.

Ould Abdel Aziz led the putschists and, since the coup, his junta has taken over the powers of the president and formed a new government with the support of a majority of deputies in parliament.

It has categorically refused international demands to reinstate Abdallahi and has failed to set a date for fresh elections.

French Foreign Minister Bernard Kouchner, attending the Addis Ababa talks on behalf of the French EU presidency, said the European Union and African Union were "working on sanctions".

"According to me, they must be individual sanctions, such as travel bans," Kouchner told journalists. "How can we target the Mauritanian people who are already so poor?"

Mauritania ranks 137th on the UN Development Programme's 177-nation human development index.

"Some progress has been made, such as allowing the elected president to return to his village (250 kilometres, or 185 miles, from the capital Nouakchott) and to receive visitors," Kouchner said.

He added: "We can see how there can be sufficient national agreement for a solution to be found -- either through elections or a return to the status quo."

"What's needed in Mauritania is a return to constitutional order and to no longer accept coups destabilizing Africal. On that point, the European Union and African Union are in full agreement."

Jean Ping, head of the African Union Commission, told AFP on Thursday that the continental grouping's stance on Mauritania was "almost similar" to that of the European Union, the United States and others.

"We have condemned the coup d'etat," Ping said. "We have suspended Mauritania from the African Union, we have issued ultimatums... Everything has been done."

"Now were are going to take a decision. Our texts state that we can, in the six months after a coup, adopt sanctions."

Speaking in Paris on Thursday, Mauritania's current communications minister Mohammed Ould Moine rejected EU and AU pressure on the High Council of State led by General Mohamed Ould Abdel Aziz.

In a separate development, it emerged Friday that ousted Mauritanian prime minister Yahya Ould Ahmed Waghf has been charged with bringing about the bankruptcy of the national airline Air Mauritanie in January 2008.

Ould Ahmed Wagf, who has been under house arrest for the past three months, was charged with four other people and ordered detained by a judge late Thursday, a judicial source said.

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