KHARTOUM (Reuters) - Sudan`s Islamist government has agreed to a one-month ceasefire with rebels to ease food distribution in the famine-stricken south, the official news agency SUNA reported on Thursday. The southern rebel Sudan People`s Liberation Army (SPLA) on Wednesday declared a three-month truce in the area, where aid agencies say up to two million people are facing starvation. SUNA quoted Foreign Minister Mustafa Osman Ismail as saying the ceasefire was effective immediately. The Sudanese government called for a ceasefire during peace talks with the rebels in May. The SPLA is fighting for autonomy of the mainly Christian, animist south from the Moslem Arabised north. Ismail said the goverment had declared the truce after appeals by Kenyan President Daniel Arap Moi, the current head of the Inter-Governmental Authority on Development (IGAD) mediating in the 15-year-old Sudanese civil war. On Wednesday, the SPLA said it would halt fighting in the the Bahr al-Ghazal and Upper Nile provinces to create "corridors of tranquillity" to ease food distribution. Nairobi-based representatives of the group said the SPLA had been pressured into declaring a truce by the international community and added it reserved the right to defend itself. Aid agencies say more than 700,000 people are short of food in Bahr al-Ghazal. British Foreign Office Minister Derek Fatchett told Reuters in Khartoum on Wednesday he hoped the ceasefire would aid peace efforts between the government and the rebels. Sudanese state radio quoted Culture and Information Minister Ghazi Salahuddin as saying on Thursday the SPLA call was a "positive development". Ismail said he hoped it would "develop into a comprehensive ceasefire to coincide with negotiations as this is the only way to resolve the problem of the south." The government and the rebels are due to hold peace talks in the Ethiopian capital Addis Ababa next month. Both sides agreed in peace talks in Kenya in May to an internationally supervised vote on self-determination for the south. But they disagreed on the region`s boundaries and on issues of religion and state.