Rebels in the troubled Sudanese province of Darfur have asked the Netherlands to host possible peace talks with the Sudanese government, news agency ANP reports on Monday.

The request will be discussed with aid minister Bert Koenders and foreign minister Maxime Verhagen on Tuesday, the agency says.
‘The Netherlands would be a good option for peace talks,’ Ahmed Abdel-Shafi, a commander with the Sudan Liberation Movement Army, was quoted as saying. ‘We gave a letter to the Dutch ambassador in Khartoum in October asking for peace talks to be held in the Netherlands’.
Abdel-Shafi is due to meet the Dutch ministers on Tuesday afternoon. Koenders and Verhagen are on a four-day visit to Sudan where they will meet government officials, UN representatives and aid workers.
Fighting between rebel forces and the government have cost an estimated 200,000 lives over the past five years.