Former south Sudanese fighters have rejoined the national government, two months after walking out over the implementation of a peace deal that ended two decades of war.
The move came on Thursday, after Omar al-Bashir, the Sudanese president, approved new appointments for Sudanese People's Liberation Movement (SPLM) officials in his government.
Al-Bashir gave 16 posts, made up of seven ministers and six ministers of state and three presidential advisors, to the SPLM.
The most prominent new appointment was Deng Alor, a former cabinet affairs minister, who was named the new foreign minister, replacing Lam Akol.
Among the other new appointments are Pagan Amum, the SPLM secretary-general, who was named minister for cabinet affairs, and Mansour Khalid, a former minister who comes from a prominent Muslim family in the north, as a presidential adviser.
The new ministers took the oath of office on Thursday.
Division
The SPLM, led by Salva Kiir, Sudan's first vice-president, quit the cabinet in October complaining that the north was failing to implement the 2005 Comprehensive Peace Agreement that ended Africa's longest-running civil war.
Relations between Khartoum and the south had been increasingly unstable.
The SPLM accuse the government of ignoring disregarding agreements on sharing the country's oil wealth and remilitarising contested border zones where the main oil reserves are located.
A first round of talks aimed at resolving the crisis broke down on November 11, but the two sides announced on December 12 that an agreement had been reached that would pave the way for the return of the southerners to the cabinet.
The peace agreement provides for a six-year transition period in which the south has regional autonomy and participates in a national unity government ahead of a referendum in 2011 that will decide the region's future status.