Liberia's warring factions were poised to sign a deal to form an interim government and end 14 years of almost non-stop war, a week after warlord-turned-president Charles Taylor was forced to resign and go into exile. "There are absolutely no hitches, there were no outstanding issues this morning," an exultant Mohamed ibn Chambas, the executive secretary of the Economic Community of West African States (ECOWAS), told AFP. Chambas said the agreement would be signed at 6:00 pm at the Accra Conference Centre. Two rebel groups and the west African country's caretaker government will next begin choosing the top leadership of the government, and "are expected to come to a decision by tomorrow," Chambas said. Earlier Monday, Kabineh Ja'neh, the top representative of the main rebel movement, the Liberians United for Reconciliation and Democracy (LURD), said: "Everything is on board. We are signing the treaty and we hope everybody will respect it." Talks between the caretaker government of President Moses Blah, who took over from Taylor last week, and the two rebel groups -- LURD and the Movement for Democracy in Liberia (MODEL) -- began Thursday but were nearly derailed at the weekend. LURD 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. Information Minister Reginald Goodridge said, for his part: "We should not set a precedent for people who shoot their way into town. Those who bring destruction to the people should not be rewarded." 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 chairman and vice chairman -- will be drawn from political parties and civic groups, not the rebels or Blah's government, said ECOWAS spokesman 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. Jacques Klein, the top UN official for Liberia, clearly fed up with the slow progress of the talks, said Sunday that the main mediator, former Nigerian ruler General Abdulsalami Abubakar, was being too soft. "I told the mediator he has been very patient," Klein told reporters, adding: "Those negotiating here are too comfortable." Klein also warned that he would recommend that UN peacekeepers be deployed in Liberia with a mandate to open fire if they felt the peace process was threatened. The interim government is due to take over in October from Blah's caretaker government and will remain in power until January 2006, Ugoh said. 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. West African officials privately said the LURD demands for the key posts could have stemmed in part from the fact that rebels who waged a 10-month war in Ivory Coast, Liberia's eastern neighbour, managed to get plum posts in a new national unity government. LURD and MODEL control four-fifths of Liberia's territory after fighting Taylor's men for nearly five years. **PHOTO CAPTION*** Soldiers of the main rebel movement Liberians United for Reconciliation and Democracy (LURD) stand guard at a checkpoint at the Po River, North of Monrovia.(AFP/Issouf Sanogo)