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Libe ria's interim government and two rebel groups yesterday 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 continues in office until January 2006.

Sekou Damate Conneh, the leader of the Liberians United for Reconciliation and Democracy (LURD) main rebel group; Thomas Nimely, chairperson 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.

However, they insisted that the speaker's job should be open to everybody and not limited to political parties, a condition the Ecowas mediators accepted.

The president and vice president - to be called the chairperson and vice chairperson - will be drawn from political parties and civic groups, not the rebels or Blah's government, said Ecowas spokesperson Sunny Ugoh, explaining that "the posts have been renamed as it is an interim administration".

After the pact is signed, the rebels and Blah's caretaker government will choose the leader and number two from among six candidates.

The new government will have 76 members: 12 each from Blah's government and the two rebel groups; 18 from political parties; seven from civil society and special interest groups; and one from each of Liberia's 15 counties. – Sapa – AFP.

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