Ivory Coast's government and rebel negotiators have agreed on rebel leader Guillaume Soro as prime minister, a source said today.
President Laurent Gbagbo and Mr Soro, leader of the New Forces rebels who seized the north of the country in a brief 2002-03 civil war, struck a peace deal three weeks ago in Burkina Faso that called for a new transitional government by early April.
Ivorian rebel leader Guillaume Soro
The talks were brokered by Burkina Faso's President Blaise Compaore, and the two sides had agreed on Mr Soro's nomination so that he could name a new government by the April 8th deadline.
Speculation had been rife that Mr Soro would replace Charles Konan Banny, a banker appointed as prime minister under a previous UN-backed peace plan, in any new administration.
Mr Banny told reporters in the Ivorian capital Yamoussoukro that he had never seen his role as anything other than transitional.
The former French colony has been split between a rebel-held north and government-run south since the war. A string of foreign-brokered peace deals has failed to reunite the country, previously a haven of stability in turbulent West Africa.
The latest peace agreement, signed by Mr Gbagbo and Mr Soro in Burkina Faso on March 4th, has already led to the creation of a joint army command centre to focus on demobilising militia fighters from both sides, raising hopes for reunification.
France said last week it would send home about 500 of its 3,500 peacekeepers in Ivory Coast, who are supporting more than 7,000 UN troops policing a buffer zone between the rebel and government halves of the country.