It was the first time al-Bashir had called for a cease-fire since the announcement last week of the U.N.-backed talks in Tripoli, Libya set to start Oct. 27. A top rebel leader has demanded that hostilities end before negotiations can begin.

"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.

"We hope that the negotiations in Tripoli will be the last ones and that they will bring a final peace," al-Bashir said, speaking through a translator.

Khartoum has regularly agreed to cease-fires but all have been quickly breached by the parties involved in the conflict.

Abdel Wahid Elnur, who leads a major faction of the Sudan Liberation Movement rebels, has said negotiations should not start until a cease-fire is in place and a planned U.N.-African Union joint peacekeeping force is on the ground. U.N. officials have said troops could start to deploy in October for the 26,000-strong joint peacekeeping force.

Al-Bashir said he had asked Prodi to push those European countries hosting rebel leaders to pressure them to take part in the talks. Elnur is based in Paris.

Al-Bashir's cease-fire offer came just four days after a major attack launched by his forces against units of the Justice and Equality rebel group in Haskanita, a small town in northern Darfur. Sudanese army helicopter gunships and Antonov aircraft bombed the town in violation of a U.N. military flight embargo, killing over a dozen people.

Al-Bashir, who came to power in 1989 in a military and Islamic coup, was in Rome for talks with top Italian officials and Pope Benedict XVI. His rare, high-profile visit to Western Europe that has raised concern from human rights advocates and some politicians.

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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