Federal Affairs Minister Shiferaw Teklemariam and the chairman of the ONLF faction's supreme souncil, Salahdin Abdurahman Maow, inked the deal, but which was dismissed by the group's main body which has vowed to continue fighting.

"The conviction of both sides has brought about a historical reconciliation in the region," Shiferaw said.

On his part, Salahdin said: "We have come to understand the destructive nature of war and war is not the only solution to our problems."

State officials said the government would provide amnesty to the group's members and grant the region the right to self determination up to independence.

However, the spokesman of the ONLF group still waging war dismissed the breakaway rebels as "irrelevant."

"It's irrelevant. They don't represent anybody and it will not change anything in the Ogaden. The fighting will continue," Abderahmane Mahadi told AFP by phone from Britain.

"They are just individuals who want to get constituencies and have power, of course money is also very important."

Tuesday's signing followed the government's annuncement in June that the breakaway group had agreed to lay down arms.

The government then said the group's members would benefit from immunity from prosecution and their movement would be turned into a political party.

The ONLF has been fighting for the independence of the remote southeastern Ogaden since its formation in 1984, claiming they have been marginalised by the the Addis Ababa regime.

In a major raid in 2007, the ONLF rebels attacked a Chinese-run oil exploration operation in the region, killing 77 people including nine Chinese nationals and prompting a government crackdown.

The barren Ogaden region has long been extremely poor, but the discovery of gas and oil has brought new hopes of wealth as well as new causes of conflict.

Both the government and the insurgents routinely trade accusations or trumpet major military victories, but information on the region is very hard to verify because independent media access to the remote region is banned.

The ONLF has said in the past that it was ready to talk with the government through the mediation of a third country, a request so far rejected by Addis Abeba.

Salahdin called for the exclusion of his erstwhile comrades-in-arms.

"Ethiopia's constitution is functioning in all regions but ours. We want to close that gap between our region and the rest of Ethiopia," Salahdin said at the ceremony also attended by foreign diplomats.

"To those who haven't joined the peace process, we should bring them to justice and exclude them from our society."

earlier related report
HRW calls on DRCongo to arrest former rebel, now general
Kinshasa (AFP) Oct 13, 2010 - US-based campaigners Human Rights Watch on Wednesday called on the Kinshasa government to arrest one its own generals, a former rebel wanted by the International Criminal Court.

"The government of the Democratic Republic of Congo should immediately arrest Bosco Ntaganda, a Congolese army general sought on an arrest warrant from the International Criminal Court," the group said in a statement.

"Since January 2010, Ntaganda has been implicated in the assassination of at least eight people, arbitrary arrests of another seven, and the abduction and disappearance of at least one more," it added.

"Ntaganda is a threat to the people of eastern Congo and is making a mockery of the Congolese government's policy of zero tolerance for human rights abuses," said Anneke Van Woudenberg, senior researcher with the group.

"The majority of those targeted by Ntaganda are family members or former supporters of the rebel leader Laurent Nkunda."

Nkunda, a Tutsi and once himself a general in the DRCongo army, led the rebel National Congress for the Defence of the People (CNDP) movement.

In January 2009, Rwandan forces arrested him at Gisenyi on Rwanda's border with the DR Congo after an unprecedented joint operation by the Rwandan and Congolese troops.

It was Ntaganda who helped oust Nkunda from the CNDP leadership at that time, subsequently integrating it into the Congolese army so it could help pursue Hutu rebel groups in the troubled eastern DR Congo.

Human Rights Watch said that Ntaganda was now based in Goma, in eastern DR Congo.

"President Kabila claims that Ntaganda is necessary for the peace process," said Van Woudenberg.

"But Ntaganda's brutal targeting of opponents and blatant disregard for Congolese law and basic human rights is no way to achieve peace," she added.

In the latest killing, Lieutenant Colonel Antoine Balibuno, a former Nkunda associate, was shot dead in Goma, said the group.

In the months before his murder, he had repeated said that Ntaganda had threatened him for refusing to support his leadership of the CNDP.

The 2006 ICC warrant against Ntaganda, which was unsealed in April 2008, accuses him of war crimes including the forced conscription of child soldiers between July 2002 and December 2003.

At that time he was a senior member of the Patriotic Forces for the Liberation of the Congo (FPLC) and was also known as "The Terminator," says the warrant.

Van Woudenberg called on UN peacekeeping forces in the region to help the Congolese government arrest Ntaganda, "as they have done in others cases of human rights abusers..."

"Failure to do so places the UN peacekeepers in the untenable position of supporting a suspected war criminal wanted by the ICC."

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