By Loucoumane Coulibaly ABIDJAN, March 23 (Reuters) - Ivory Coast pro-government militia welcomed on Friday a peace deal signed this month between President Laurent Gbagbo and northern rebels but said they would impose conditions on disarming. The militia in the west of the world's largest cocoa grower fought alongside government troops in the most violent phase of a 2002-2003 civil war, during which the New Forces rebels seized the northern half of the former French colony. A U.N.-backed programme to disarm the western militia fell apart in August because too few weapons were surrendered. However, the peace deal between Gbagbo and rebel leader Guillaume Soro signed in Burkina Faso's capital Ouagadougou revived hopes that disarmament could be successfully concluded. "The Forces of Resistance of the Grand West supports the Ouagadougou agreement," militia leader Glofiei Denis Maho told a news conference. "We thank Guillaume Soro for understanding that Ivorians have suffered enough from this crisis." Maho criticised the decision not to invite militia leaders to the Ouagadougou talks, brokered by Burkinabe President Blaise Compaore. He demanded a meeting with the signatories of the accord before a new transitional government was formed. The meeting would serve to discuss the conditions for the militia's 10,800 fighters to lay down their arms, Maho said. Under the Ouagadougou accord, a new transitional government is due to be named by early April, with militia disarmament scheduled to begin two weeks afterwards. "Before we arrive at the formation of a new government, we must reach an agreement so that everything will go well afterwards. We still have weapons in our hands," Maho said. "We will surrender our arms on a solid basis, on a specific basis." It was not clear whether the current premier Charles Konan Banny, named under a U.N.-backed peace plan, would stay on as the head of the new transitional government. The military leaders of government and rebel forces held talks on Friday to discuss a new joint command, the first step towards forming a new unified military ahead of elections due within 10 months.
