Former southern Sudan rebels are to join peace talks aimed at ending more than 30 months of civil war in the western region of Darfur, a Sudanese daily reported yesterday. The Sudan Peoples Liberation Movement has already named a delegation to participate in the African Union-sponsored negotiations in the Nigerian capital Abuja, Akhbar Al-Yom said. It added that the team included senior SPLM officials Deng Alor, the new minister for Cabinet affairs, Yasser Arman, a northerner, and Abdul Aziz Hilu from the Nuba Mountains in central Sudan. âThe SPLM is now part of the national unity government and it is illogical to let the National Congress party negotiate alone in the name of the government,â the paper quoted SPLM deputy leader Riek Machar as saying.The national unity government was formed last week, eight months after the signing of a peace agreement with Khartoum that ended more than two decades of north-south conflict that left some two million people dead. International observers have said that power and wealth-sharing arrangements in the Jan. 9 peace deal could be used as a model to end the conflicts in Darfur and eastern Sudan. The SPLM has expressed sympathy with the cause of the people of Darfur and their demands for greater political and economic autonomy from Khartoum. Sudanâs new Foreign Minister Lam Akol Ajawin said Sunday that his SPLM movement would propose a solution to the Darfur conflict to the government in Khartoum.