August 19, 2003	Tuesday	Jumadi-us-Sani 20, 1424

ACCRA, Aug 18: Liberia’s interim government and two rebel groups on Monday signed a comprehensive peace pact that includes details of a new power-sharing administration to end a four-year civil war.

The agreement, signed in the Ghanaian capital Accra, contains the parameters of a new caretaker government which is due to take power in October and continue in office until January 2006.

Sekou Damate Conneh, the leader of the Liberians United for Reconciliation and Democracy (LURD) main rebel group; Thomas Nimely, chairman of the smaller Movement for Democracy in Liberia (MODEL) and Liberian Foreign Minister Lewis Brown signed the document.

The signing of the pact was witnessed by top leaders of the Economic Community of West African States (ECOWAS) regional bloc which is brokering the deal, including its executive secretary Mohamed ibn Chambas.

Also present at the ceremony were former Nigerian president, General Abdulsalami Abubakar, the chief mediator at the talks and Ghana’s President John Kufuor, whose country holds the rotating presidency of ECOWAS.

The signatories are due to immediately start choosing the top leadership of the new government and “are expected to come to a decision by tomorrow,” ECOWAS executive secretary ibn Chambas said earlier.

Talks on the new peace pact between the caretaker government of President Moses Blah, who took over from president Charles Taylor last week, and the two rebel groups began Thursday but were nearly derailed at the weekend.

LURD, which has been battling Taylor for the past four years, threatened to resume fighting if it did not get the number two position in the new government, which the rebels claimed they had been promised along with the post of parliamentary speaker.

ECOWAS officials denied the claim, saying it had been agreed that no one from any of the warring factions would be president, vice president, speaker or deputy speaker in the new government.

The rebels, bowing to intense international pressure, on Sunday dropped their demand for the vice presidency, salvaging the talks.—AFP