INTERVIEW-Sudan ready for new Darfur ceasefire: negotiator

* End to Darfur conflict within reach, says negotiator

* Darfur resolution depends on healing rift with Chad

* Sudan to urge end of sanctions at Washington summit



By Andrew Heavens

KHARTOUM, June 16 (Reuters) - Sudan's government is ready to call a fresh ceasefire in Darfur and is exploring new ways to end its related "war of attrition" with neighbouring Chad, a presidential advisor said on Tuesday.

Ghazi Salaheddin, who became the Khartoum government's new chief negotiator in Darfur last month, told Reuters he was increasingly optimistic an end to the six-year conflict was within reach. "I can see it, but I cannot touch it," he said in an interview.

The Darfur conflict broke out in 2003 when mostly non-Arab rebels took up arms against Sudan's government, accusing it of neglecting the remote and underdeveloped western region.

Khartoum unleashed troops and militias to crush the uprising. Estimates of the death toll range from 300,000 according to the United Nations to 10,000 according to Khartoum.

Salaheddin, seen as a more conciliatory figure than his two predecessors in the negotiator's job, said he had recently toured Darfur and found public support for the insurgency, and the numbers of clashes, falling.

"The ordinary man is so fed up with the war. The people are longing to have peace ... All we can offer is to negotiate, without preconditions. We said, let's negotiate. And everything is on the table, for us, as far as we are concerned."

Asked whether Sudan's government was ready to call a fresh ceasefire, he replied: "Absolutely. Actually, we are demanding to have a ceasefire ... What we are saying is -- let's have a ceasefire agreement, let's have a framework agreement and move on."

Sudan is currently holding troubled discussions in Qatar with Darfur's rebel Justice and Equality Movement (JEM) that are supposed to pave the way to full peace talks.

But the meetings have stalled over what JEM says in Khartoum's failure to live up to an earlier agreement to free prisoners, among other confidence-building measures.



TROUBLED RELATIONS

The Darfur conflict has also been complicated by troubled relations between Sudan and Chad, which Khartoum accuses of supporting JEM. Chad sent warplanes into Sudan last month to bomb positions it says were held by anti-Chadian rebels supported by Khartoum.

Salaheddin said any full solution to Darfur depended on healing the rift between the Sudan and Chad, which borders Darfur.

"When you see the vastness of the territory there and the length of the borders, it is absolutely impossible to patrol the borders unless you reach a real settlement, a political settlement ... We have to find a way to stop this war of attrition between Chad and Sudan."

He refused to go into further detail about how Sudan was planning to reach an agreement. "But we are working on some new suggestions, some rudimentary ideas."

Salaheddin's comments come amid signs of thawing relations between Sudan and the United States, which has been pushing for an end to the Darfur conflict.

The presidential adviser was due to fly to fly to Washington later on Tuesday, to lead a delegation from Sudan's dominant National Congress Party at a meeting on progress in the 2005 Comprehensive Peace Agreement -- the accord that ended two decades of civil war between north and south Sudan.

Salaheddin said he hoped the high-profile conference would encourage more international donors to support key parts of the faltering peace deal, not least national elections scheduled for February 2010, and disarmament programmes.

He added he the Sudanese delegation would repeat its request for the United States to remove Sudan from its list of state sponsors of terrorism and to end sanctions, imposed on Khartoum for reported human rights abuses, support for terrorist organisations and the Darfur conflict. Sudan says it has been helping the U.S in the war on terror.

"We have been hearing nice words from them (the Americans). But we are looking for concrete steps," said Salaheddin.

"We need to explain why it is important for the United States to support the Comprehensive Peace Agreement by normalising relations." (Editing by Giles Elgood)