(Updates with end of talks)

By Opheera McDoom

KHARTOUM, Oct 18 (Reuters) - The two sides in Sudan's national coalition met on Thursday to try to salvage their fragile peace deal after former southern rebels walked out of the government, but the talks adjourned with no resolution.

"There was agreement to complete discussions on the outstanding problems in the deal," presidential spokesman Mahjoub Fadul said after the meeting in Khartoum. He did not specify when the talks might resume.

The three-and-a-half-hour talks brought together President Omar Hassan al-Bashir and First Vice-President Salva Kiir, chairman of the Sudan People's Liberation Movement, and were the highest-level meeting between the two sides since the SPLM withdrew from the government last week.

The SPLM move followed months of stalemate on key elements of a landmark 2005 north-south peace deal that ended Africa's longest civil war.

Those elements include redeployment of northern troops from southern oilfields, mapping the borders of the oil-rich Abyei region, demarcating the north-south boundary and the fate of hundreds of political prisoners being held in northern jails.

Fadul said: "It was agreed the new SPLM ministers would be sworn in before the president in the presence of the first vice-president."

He said there was no agreement on a date for the swearing-in, and that some SPLM ministers were out of the country. There was no discussion of a cabinet reshuffle that had already been announced, he said.

The SPLM was not immediately available for comment.

STRAINED RELATIONS

Bashir approved the cabinet reshuffle after a three-month delay on Wednesday, one of the SPLM demands, but southern officials said it was not as Kiir wanted with two presidential advisers lacking.

While both sides have insisted they do not want a return to war, recent relations have been strained. Bashir met SPLM Vice-Chairman Riek Machar and a high-level team on Tuesday after making them wait for two days in Khartoum.

Before the meeting, presidential security guards said SPLM Deputy Secretary-General Yasir Arman's name was not on the list and made the delegation move from four cars into two before allowing them to enter.

The SPLM and local media reported demonstrations throughout southern Sudanese towns in support of the SPLM move.

The international community has remained largely quiet and privately worried by the move, the biggest challenge to the 2005 peace accord.

The SPLM has given Bashir's party until Jan. 9, the third anniversary of the deal, to show progress on outstanding issues.

Officials say the reshuffle itself is not enough for the SPLM to return to its posts in the cabinet, where it accounts for more than a quarter of members.

"The (deal) is not about ministerial jobs. It is about addressing the root causes of the war. If we don't address the root causes of the war they will always come back," Arman said.

The SPLM's action has the support of many southerners.

"The walkout must continue until the NCP demonstrates that it is willing to move forward in one or two more points," said the independent daily Khartoum Monitor in an editorial, under the headline "Bravo SPLM."

Sudan's north-south conflict cost 2 million lives and more than 4 million were driven from their homes.

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