"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 the July 14 announcement 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.

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, a critical 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 central government of neglect.

In more than 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 saying his lack of English or Arabic would not make affect his ability to do the job.

"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.