The final obstacle to nominating the new government was removed Sunday, when the former warring parties resolved the issue of control of the army.
"I sincerely hope this is the end of the war," Kabila said after the deal was signed by his government, the main rebel groups and their respective allies in the mineral-rich but impoverished former Zaire.
The deal gave the main rebel group, the Congolese Rally for Democracy (RCD), control over ground forces, with rival rebel group, the Congolese Liberation Movement (MLC), commanding the navy.
The interim government, which sources said Kabila was due to announce imminently, was provided for under a peace pact signed in December to end more than four years of war in the DRC, a country the size of western Europe.
The conflict, which began in 1998 when Rwanda and Uganda invaded to support rebels seeking to oust the government in Kinshasa, drew in a dozen African nations at its height and killed some 2,5-million people, either in combat or through disease and hunger.
It was fuelled by the DRC's huge mineral wealth, with all parties using the chaos to plunder the country of its natural resources.
A peace pact, which provides for the transitional government to be set up, came into force in April this year, but unrest has continued in the northeastern Ituri and Kivu regions, where hundreds have died in recent months in various conflicts between ethnic militias and rebel groups.
A French-led European Union peacekeeping force has been deployed to stop further bloodshed in Bunia, the main city in the Ituri region.
Diplomats in the capital Kinshasa were confident the overall peace deal would stick.
"I hope that this accord and the establishment of a transitional government will mean that a lasting peace has come to Congo," said Moustapha Niasse, the former Senegalese prime minister who mediated the negotiations.
US President George W Bush last week joined calls for the belligerents in DRC to set up the transitional government by yesterday, when the country clebrates its anniversary of independence from Belgium in 1960.
Under the peace deal, Kabila, who assumed power after the assassination of his father Laurent in January 2001, will share power with four vice presidents.
One will come from each of the two main rebel movements, one from the government and one from the political opposition.
Ministries will be divided up between the different parties to the government, and former rebel fighters will be integrated into the army and police force.
Elections are due to be held within 24 months of the investiture of the transitional government, but that period may be extended.
The elections would be only the second that the DRC, ruled from 1965 to 1997 by the staggeringly corrupt Mobutu Sese Seko, has held since independence. - Sapa-AFP.
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