UN Secretary-General Ban Ki-moon welcomed the progress of the peace negotiations in Doha, stressing that it had to be "all-inclusive" to address the root causes of the seven-year conflict in the western Sudanese region, a UN spokesperson said here Monday.

On Sunday, the UN secretary-general met with the joint UN-African Union mediator for Darfur, Djibril Bassole, during his visit to Morocco. Ban was there to address the opening session of World Policy Conference.

"Bassole briefed the secretary-general on the status of the Doha process and that he was working with the two sides on a global agreement, which he hoped would be endorsed by the groups that had stayed away from the process so far," Farhan Haq, a UN spokesperson, said here in a daily news briefing.

As a mediator of the Darfur peace process, Doha has brokered several rounds of talks between Khartoum and rebel groups in the past years.

The secretary-general "welcomed this progress, but stressed that for the agreement to be sustainable, it had to be all inclusive and addressed the root causes of the problems," said Haq.

Devastating fightings in Darfur since 2003 forces have left around 300,000 people dead and 2.7 million others displaced, according to the United Nations.