By Caroline Hawley in Khartoum

Sudan's Information Minister Ghazi Salah al-Din has said that the president's move against the influential speaker of parliament, Hassan al-Turabi, has opened up "new frontiers for peace".

And he announced that the main priority now for President Omar al-Bashir's government was to speed up negotiations with opposition groups and prepare for new elections at the end of the three-month state of emergency declared last Sunday.

Mr Salah al-Din said the war in the south was Sudan's main problem and that the government was committed to negotiating seriously to end it, based on the principle of self-determination for the south.

But he told a small group of journalists in Khartoum that the government had no plans to end Sharia law in Sudan.

Pressure to end war

Sixteen years of war between Muslim northerners and Christian and animist southerners have devastated Sudan.

Up to two million people are thought to have died either in battle or through famine caused by the war.

The conflict has also crippled the Sudanese economy, costing the government an estimated $1.5m a day.

But there is now growing public pressure to find a peaceful solution.

If the war stopped, one man told me, this country would be transformed.

The government knows the war cannot be won militarily and diplomats believe the army is desperate to end it.

Opposition hopes

Opposition leaders now hope that President Bashir's split with Mr Turabi, who was the main idealogue behind the country's Islamist government, may have brought the prospects of peace closer.

Some say President Bashir will have no option but to really push for peace to ensure his political survival. Others believe that he now has more freedom of manoeuvre.

Either way, he will come under strong internal and international pressure to move ahead.

There is also pressure on the United States not to proceed with moves to provide food aid to the main southern rebel group, the SPLA, a decision which many in the international community believe would help prolong the war.

There is now a feeling in Khartoum that the chances of ending the conflict are better than they have been since the current government came to power more than a decade ago.