( AFP ) - US President George W. Bush will meet with South Sudan leader Salva Kiir on November 15 for talks focused on ending violence in the country's Darfur province, the White House said Tuesday.
"The two leaders will discuss implementation of the Comprehensive Peace Agreement, the situation in Darfur, and the status of ongoing peace talks to end the violence there," said spokeswoman Dana Perino.
Kiir, who is first vice president of Sudan's government of national unity, said in Washington last week that his former rebels would stay out of the national government in Khartoum until a 2005 peace deal is fully implemented.
He said that the Comprehensive Peace Agreement (CPA) was staggering "like a drunken person" but remained on the table.
UN Secretary General Ban Ki-Moon, who spoke to AFP at the end of a three-day trip to Brazil, endorsed the upcoming meeting.
"I hope that President Bush and Salva Kiir will have a good meeting on the ways and means to implement the CPA," he said.
Ban said it was "regrettable" that much of the CPA has not been carried out.
In September, ministers with Kiir's Sudan People's Liberation Movement (SPLM) quit the Khartoum government in protest at slow progress in implementing the CPA, which ended Africa's longest-running civil war in 2005.
Complaints have centered on the finalizing of a north-south border, the withdrawal of troops from each side's area of control, and the fate of the disputed oil-rich region of Abiye.