(Adds further quotes on ICC, bombing, meeting with Bashir)

By Opheera McDoom

KHARTOUM, July 20 (Reuters) - Darfur's new chief mediator Djibril Bassole made his first visit to Sudan on Sunday as he begins his uphill task of reigniting a stalled peace process.

"This will be a difficult mission but it's not mission impossible," he told reporters after long talks with Sudan's State Minister for Foreign Affairs Ali Karti.

Bassole, the foreign minister of Burkino Faso, faces numerous obstacles to securing peace. Not least an announcement on July 14 that the International Criminal Court wants an arrest warrant for Sudan's President Omar Hassan al-Bashir for genocide, war crimes and crimes against humanity in Darfur.

"My priorities will be defined by the Sudanese but we must strengthen dialogue and ask for a cessation of hostilities to create the conditions to search for a comprehensive political solution," Bassole said.

The mediator met Bashir, a presidential advisor said, and confirmed he would be starting his post on Aug. 1.

"The president gave him a briefing on how to resolve Darfur and said he was ready for any talks with Nafie (Nafie Ali Nafie) as the head of the government negotiating team," Bashir's press advisor Mahjoub Fadul told Reuters.

Bassole's task will be complicated by the fact he speaks neither Arabic or English, the languages understood by those negotiating, whether from rebels or from the government.

Bassole will be based in Darfur's main town el-Fasher, an improvement on his predecessors, U.N. envoy Jan Eliasson and his African Union counterpart Salim Ahmed Salim, who were often criticised for their "part-time diplomacy" jetting into the country for short visits every few months.

International experts estimate 200,000 have died and 2.5 million driven from their homes since mostly non-Arab rebels took up arms in early 2003 accusing the government of neglect.

On Sunday the Darfur rebel Justice and Equality Movement (JEM) accused the government of bombing a village a day earlier called Seref in the rebel-held area of Jabel Moun in West Darfur near the Chad border.

"In total four people were killed including two children," said Suleiman Sandal, JEM's deputy chief of staff.

A senior Sudanese army commander denied there had been any operations in the area on Saturday.

In 18 months Salim and Eliasson failed to arrange any meaningful peace talks, rebel positions became more hardline and ongoing violence on the ground in Darfur and in neighbouring Chad heightened insecurity threatening the world's largest humanitarian operation working there.

The Sudanese said they were upbeat about Bassole:

"I'm optimistic," Karti said. "I feel that he's coming to stay in Sudan to (find about) about the problem from all sides whether the government or the armed groups."

Salim led the AU-mediated Darfur Peace Agreement (DPA) of May 2006 signed by only one of three Darfur rebel negotiating groups under intense international scrutiny which has been largely unimplemented and caused the already fractious rebels to splinter even further.

Sudan hopes the U.N. Security Council will pass a resolution to suspend any ICC arrest warrant for 12 months.

Karti said nothing was formally proposed as yet but the African Union whose Peace and Security Council will meet in the coming days would be the ones to table any resolution.

"It is the AU who has the right to table such a request at the Security Council," he said. The Security Council referred Darfur to the ICC in an unprecedented move in 2005.

AU officials have expressed concern that the ICC's first four cases have all focused on Africa. (Editing by Matthew Jones) (For full Reuters Africa coverage and to have your say on the top issues, visit: http://africa.reuters.com/ )

AlertNet news is provided by