By Peter Murphy

ABIDJAN, March 3 (Reuters) - Negotiators for Ivory Coast's president and his rebel opponents have drawn up a new peace plan to reunite the divided West African state and hold elections after talks in neighbouring Burkina Faso, they said on Saturday.

Alain Lobgonon, a spokesman for the New Forces rebels who seized the northern half of the world's top cocoa grower in a brief 2002-2003 civil war, said the movement's leader Guillaume Soro and President Laurent Gbagbo would sign the deal on Sunday.

"Yes. The discussions are finished. Tomorrow the leaders will sign," Alain Lobognon, one of the negotiators for the rebel New Forces at the talks told Reuters by telephone from Burkina Faso's capital Ouagadougou. He gave no further details.

The discussions began on Feb. 5 and have dealt with sensitive issues including disarmament and voter identification. The international community has welcomed the talks initiated by Gbagbo, perceived as a home-grown effort to restore peace.

Presidential spokesman Desire Tagro, representing Gbagbo at the negotiations, said the deal would be signed in the presence of Burkina Faso's President Blaise Compaore who brokered the talks as head of the Economic Community of West African states.

A string of international peace deals, including a current U.N.-backed peace plan which foresees long-delayed elections by the end of October, have foundered as government, rebel and opposition sides squabble over how they should be implemented.

The Ivorian press has been rife with speculation that any deal in Ouagadougou would appoint Soro as prime minister, replacing central banker Charles Konan Banny who was named by the U.N.-backed plan to oversee disarmament and hold elections.

Little official information about the content of the negotiations has been made public and there has been no confirmation of how it would address the post of premier.

Soro was expected to meet the heads of the main opposition parties in Abidjan later on Saturday to discuss the outcome of the talks before returning to Ouagadougou "for the closure of direct dialogue" a statement from the rebels said.

Though fighting during the civil war was brief, the former haven of peace in conflict-prone West Africa has seen poverty spread while the political crisis endures. The former French colony has been destabilised by frequent rioting and protests.

More than 11,000 peacekeepers, both U.N. and French troops, patrol a buffer zone to keep the Ivorian government and rebel forces apart.

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