Rome ? Sudan’s president met with the pope and Italy’s premier Friday and offered to declare a cease-fire with Darfur rebels to coincide with the start of U.N.-backed peace talks next month.

Past truces have been regularly violated, and at least two rebel groups quickly dismissed his offer.

Still, after President Omar al-Bashir’s meeting with Pope Benedict XVI, the Vatican expressed hope the upcoming talks would end the suffering in Darfur, where more than 200,000 people have died and 2.5 million made homeless since ethnic African rebels took up arms in early 2003 against the Arab-dominated Sudanese government.

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

Al-Bashir told reporters after meeting with Italian Premier Romano Prodi that he was offering a cease-fire linked to the start of negotiations Oct. 27 in Libya, which borders on Darfur, to “create a positive climate.”

“We hope that the negotiations in Tripoli will be the last ones and that they will bring definitive peace,” al-Bashir said.

A rebel leader, Abdulwahid Elnur of the Sudan Liberation Movement, has refused to join the talks, saying negotiations should not start before a cease-fire and before the arrival of a U.N.-African Union peacekeeping force. U.N. officials have said troops could start deploying in October.

“How many cease-fires is al-Bashir going to offer?” Elnur asked Friday in a telephone call from Paris, adding: “No one on Earth will make me go” to Libya.

Elnur listed nearly a dozen that he said Sudan’s forces violated, but observers said some were also breached by Darfur rebels.