By Alistair Thomson

BANGUI, Feb 13 (Reuters) - Central African Republic has stepped up efforts to make rebel leaders sign peace agreements that could pave the way for U.N. troops to secure its volatile borders with Sudan and Chad, officials say.

Two leaders from a rebel coalition that seized northeastern towns and villages near the Sudan border late last year signed a peace deal in Libya early this month, and presidency and U.N. officials said a delegation had gone to try to get other coalition leaders imprisoned in Benin, West Africa, to sign too.

"There has been a meeting ... but there is no news yet," General Lamine Cisse, U.N. special representative to Central African Republic (CAR), told Reuters late on Monday.

CAR President Francois Bozize has faced armed rebellion waged in part by fighters and Chadian mercenaries who helped him seize power in 2003 but then turned against him.

Since 2005 most fighting has been in the northwest, forcing many people from their homes, but the capture last Oct. 30 of the remote northeastern town of Birao, near Sudan's violent Darfur region, opened a new front in the conflict.

French troops backed by jet fighter planes and helicopters helped Bozize's loyalist forces recapture Birao and other towns and villages in December, forcing fighters of the Union of Democratic Forces for Unity (UFDR) coalition into the bush.

The U.N. Security Council has proposed sending in peacekeepers to secure the border area, but U.N. officials say there must first be a peace to keep.

Abdoulaye Miskine, leader of the People's Democratic Front faction of the UFDR, signed a peace accord in Libya in early February along with another rebel leader.

TALKS IN BENIN

Government officials and a representative of a "Group of Wise People" overseeing peace efforts are in Benin trying to sign up two more UFDR leaders, Michel Djotodia and Captain Abakar Sabone, who were detained by authorities there in November during the occupation of Birao.

Benin judicial authorities have examined whether to extradite the pair to CAR, but a presidency source in Bangui said it was likely they would be set free under a peace deal.

"They were meant to be released today, but they have not been yet," the source told Reuters in Bangui late on Monday.

A peace deal could pave the way for U.N. troops to deploy on CAR's border with Sudan, a compromise move after Khartoum's resistance to deployment of a full U.N. peace force in Darfur to stop what Washington calls genocide.

Bozize is expected to discuss the crisis with counterparts at the "France-Afrique" summit of African leaders in Cannes, France, this week, Abdou Karim Méckassoua, his minister of state for communications, said on Monday.

Privately some U.N. and security officials question what influence deals signed by exiled rebels will have on the ground in CAR, where even government officials admit they are unable to halt human rights abuses by their soldiers in the northwest.

Years of instability have hit Central African Republic hard, reducing life expectancy by five years to 38 in the last decade, and pushing up child and maternal mortality rates, the U.N. Children's Fund UNICEF said.

Some 50,000 refugees have crossed the border into southern Chad, and 20,000 into Cameroon, and around 150,000 are displaced within Central African Republic, many living rough in the bush after fleeing attacks on their villages by government troops.

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