KHARTOUM (AFP) — The new international mediator for the Darfur conflict said on Sunday he was impressed to see initiatives for peace and dialogue during his first visit to Sudan since his appointment.
"I was impressed to see... desire and initiatives to start to promote dialogue, peace and stability in Sudan. And this is the direction in which I am going to work in the coming days," Djibril Bassole told reporters.
His visit comes with Sudan on a diplomatic offensive in a bid to avert legal action against President Omar al-Beshir after the prosecutor of the world court sought his arrest warrant on charges of genocide and war crimes in Darfur.
Although appointed joint African Union-United Nations mediator for Darfur last month, Bassole is still Burkina Faso foreign minister and told reporters that he was on a fact-finding visit to familiarise himself with the issues.
He described the task ahead as "difficult, but not impossible" and said it would be for the Sudanese to define the main priorities of his job.
"We need to call for an end to hostilities to create the conditions for finding a comprehensive political solution," Bassole added following talks with Sudan's state minister for foreign affairs, Ali Karti.
The UN-brokered peace process on Darfur has stalled since talks in Libya last October were boycotted by key rebel factions.
Bassole's visit was greeted with a degree of criticism that speaking neither Arabic nor English in a country where government officials and even some rebels are practically bilingual in those languages will significantly hamper his job.
Karti batted aside the linguistic challenges, stressing that Bassole, unlike two previous UN and AU envoys who were criticised for spending too little time in Sudan, would be based in the country.
"I'm optimistic. I feel that he's coming to stay in Sudan, to know about the problems from all the sides, whether the government or the armed groups," he said.
"We don't have to focus on that (his language skills). He is a mediator. He has a language. He has a lot of people who can translate," Karti added.
The state minister -- filling in for Foreign Minister Deng Alor -- advised Bassole to meet ordinary people who have been on the receiving end of the suffering in Sudan's war-torn western region of Darfur as soon as possible.
"They don't have any voice. The voice now is the voice of the government and the armed groups. So it's better for him to go to the society to sit with and meet, to know how to cement all... on the way to peace," he told reporters.
The United Nations says that up to 300,000 people have died and more than 2.2 million have fled their homes since the Darfur conflict broke out in February 2003. The Sudanese government says 10,000 have been killed.
The conflict began when African ethnic minority rebels took up arms against the Arab-dominated regime and state-backed Arab militias, fighting for resources and power in one of the most remote and deprived places on earth.
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