Ivory Coast rebel leader becomes PM

ABIDJAN, Ivory Coast - Ivory Coast's president signed a decree Thursday naming a rebel leader prime minister as part of a power-sharing peace plan, a government spokesman said.

With the signature of President Laurent Gbagbo, rebel chief Guillaume Soro officially stepped into his new role under the plan to unite a country split between the rebel-held north and the government-controlled south.

After an attempted coup set off a brief civil war in 2002, Ivory Coast became divided. Numerous peace deals have failed to take hold.

The most recent accord signed March 4 in Ouagadougou, the capital of neighboring Burkina Faso, called for Soro to become prime minister and for elections within 10 months.

About 9,000 U.N. troops and 3,500 French soldiers are deployed in Ivory Coast, the world's largest cocoa producer, to ward off all-out civil war. Many patrol the giant buffer zone that runs east to west, dividing the country.

Gbagbo and Soro promised to organize a new government within five weeks and to pare down the buffer zone to a collection of checkpoints. They also agreed to start disarmament and to issue identification cards necessary for Ivorians to register to vote. The identity documents are an especially sensitive issue, because disputes over who was entitled to citizenship helped fuel the war.