(Agencies)
Updated: 2007-09-14 19:45

ROME - Sudan's President Omar al-Bashir said Friday his government is ready to implement a cease-fire with rebel forces at the start of peace talks over the conflict in Darfur, scheduled for next month in Libya.

"We have announced we are available (to put in place) a cease-fire with the start of the negotiations to create a positive climate," al-Bashir said at a news conference following talks with Italian Premier Romano Prodi and just before he met with Pope Benedict XVI.

Al-Bashir's regime has regularly agreed to cease-fires in the past and all have been quickly breached by the parties involved in the conflict.

Al-Bashir, who came to power in 1989 in a coup, arrived in Rome a few weeks before the expected deployment of an international peacekeeping force to try to improve the security situation in the war-ravaged western region of Darfur.

More than 200,000 people have died and 2.5 million have been uprooted since ethnic African rebels in Darfur took up arms against the Arab-dominated Sudanese government in 2003.

Sudan's government is accused of retaliating by unleashing a militia of Arab nomads known as the "janjaweed," a charge Khartoum denies.

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