Ivory Coast's rebels will join a unity government to end a ruinous five-month war, Togolese President Gnassingbe Eyadema, who has been trying to mediate an end to the conflict, said this evening.
The Ivorian army meanwhile said it would accept the insurgents in a compromise administration, but not in the defence or interior ministries.
"The rebels will enter the new government," Eyadema told reporters in Paris after meeting French President Jacques Chirac on the eve of a Franco-African summit.
Eyadema did not give a date for the formation of a new government to end the war in the world's leading cocoa producer.
The army said it would not allow rebels to get the sensitive defence and interior ministries they claim was promised them under a French-brokered peace deal that Gbagbo had accepted at the end of January.
AFP