By Kwasi Kpodo

ACCRA, Jan 2 (Reuters) - Ghanaian president and African Union chairman John Kufuor is planning a mediation mission to Kenya to help end ethnic killing triggered by a disputed election, aides said on Wednesday.

The United States and former colonial ruler Britain called for restraint and dialogue as the death toll from days of violence topped 300, fuelling fears of growing instability in Kenya and East Africa as a whole.

Ghanaian Foreign Minister Akwasi Osei-Adjei said Kufuor was waiting to speak by telephone with Kenyan President Mwai Kibaki before deciding whether to send a delegation to the east African country to mediate or go himself.

Kenyan opposition leader Raila Odinga accuses Kibaki of rigging his re-election in last week's closely-fought poll. The disputed outcome has sparked ethnic killings in a country often seen as a bulwark of stability in a volatile part of Africa.

"We still haven't heard from President Kibaki yet. The president (Kufuor) has already spoken with opposition leader Odinga, and to be a good mediator we think we have to speak to both parties," Osei-Adjei told Reuters.

But British Prime Minister Gordon Brown, who appealed on Tuesday to Kufuor and former Sierra Leonean President Ahmad Tejan Kabbah, the head of the Commonwealth's electoral observer mission, to intervene in Kenya, said Kufuor would go in person.

"I have just talked to President Kufuor of Ghana ... I welcome his decision, that he will announce later today, that he will go to Kenya. He will meet President Kibaki and Mr Odinga tomorrow," Brown said in a statement.

"He will call on them to urge their supporters to end violence and he will work with the parties to ensure that reconciliation is brought about and perhaps a chance that some of the people who are at the moment opponents may join a government of national unity," he said.

Earlier Kufuor's office issued a statement asking the two men to restrain their supporters to avert further violent clashes that could only lead to Kenya's destabilisation.

FEARS

Human rights groups say at least 300 people have been killed since the Dec. 27 election as political rivalries have spilled over into ethnic bloodletting between Kibaki's large Kikuyu tribe and Odinga's minority Luo and allied tribes.

About 30 villagers, some only children, were killed on Tuesday when a mob set light to a church near the town of Eldoret where hundreds of Kibaki's Kikuyu tribe had taken refuge, stoking fears of a major ethnic conflict.

Brown's Foreign Secretary David Miliband and U.S. Secretary of State Condoleezza Rice issued a joint statement on Wednesday calling for restraint and intense political dialogue.

France, Germany and Japan have all called for calm.

Miliband said events in Kenya could have repercussions in neighbouring nations and appealed for calm.

"It is clear that there are major responsibilities on Kenya's political leaders both in respect of the violence that is being perpetrated by some of their followers and in respect of the need to reach out and find common ground for a country ... that is obviously deeply divided," he told BBC radio.

"We need all legal and political avenues to be explored ... We don't know who won. There are very serious allegations of irregularities on both sides," he said. (Additional reporting by Jeremy Lovell in London; writing by Alistair Thomson; Editing by Richard Balmforth)

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