KHARTOUM - Sudan's president agreed to meet former southern rebels on Tuesday days after they withdrew their ministers from government and triggered the country's worst political crisis since a peace deal was signed in 2005.
Last week members of the Sudan People's Liberation Movement (SPLM) withdrew from a coalition government saying they wanted progress on key elements of the 2005 agreement, including troop redeployment and demarcation of the north-south border.
Both sides insist they do not want a return to war and resolved to talk through the stalemate, but relations have been described as "poisonous" between the former foes turned partners in peace.
Sudan's presidency said President Omar Hassan al-Bashir would receive SPLM Vice Chairman Riek Machar Tuesday afternoon after making Machar, also vice president of South Sudan, wait two days in Khartoum.
"This crisis is the most important issue ... and the biggest crisis in the country right now," SPLM Deputy Secretary-General Yasir Arman told Reuters.
"It is not making us wait two days, but the whole country waited -- we could have used this time to try to resolve the issues," he added.
The north-south agreement, which ended 20 years of civil war, created a coalition national government, a semi-autonomous southern administration, ensured democratic elections and gave southerners a vote on secession by 2011.
It is also seen as a model for settling Sudan's other conflicts, most notably in Darfur, and analysts say its failure threatens to undo progress toward peace elsewhere.
On Sunday the SPLM gave a letter to Minister of Presidential Affairs Bakri Hassan Saleh with a list of demands, including a cabinet reshuffle of SPLM ministers, which Bashir had delayed action on for three months, and a list of constitutional violations that needed to be resolved, one SPLM source said.
