Egyptian President Hosni Mubarak on Thursday met with the visiting Sudanese First Vice President Salva Kiir on peace efforts to end the conflict in Sudan's western region of Darfur.

Kiir will also meet with Egyptian Prime Minister Ahmed Nazif and Arab League Secretary General Amr Moussa.

The visit is Kiir's first foreign trip since he assumed his new post after his predecessor and former southern rebel leader John Garang was killed in a helicopter crash last month.

Kiir, as Garang's deputy, played a major role in negotiating a power-sharing peace deal between Khartoum and the Sudan People's Liberation Movement to end Africa's longest civil war.

Egypt, which shares a lengthy desert border with Sudan, is a key power broker in Sudan's peace process.

While the January peace deal ended war in the south, conflict is still raging in Darfur region, where thousands of people have been killed and over a million displaced since a rebellion broke up in 2003.

Source: Xinhua