ALGIERS — The head of Mali's main Tuareg-led rebel groups said Friday his movement will sign a final deal on June 20 to end the conflict in the west African nation.

The Coordination of Azawad Movements (CMA) headed by Bilal Ag Acherif initialed a peace agreement with the Malian government on May 14 but held out on a final deal until some changes were made.

"We will sign the peace accord on June 20," Acherif said following talks in Algiers on security issues.

UN envoy for Mali Mongi Hamdi welcomed the announcement, but cautioned that the hardest part was still to come.

"The most difficult phase will be to implement" the agreement, he told reporters.

According to a document seen by AFP the signing ceremony will be held in Bamako.

It will come more than three weeks after the government and several armed groups signed the so-called "Algiers Accord" on May 15, which was spurned by the CMA.

That deal aims to bring stability to northern Mali, cradle of several Tuareg uprisings since the 1960s and a stronghold for jihadists linked to Al-Qaeda.

Acherif and government representatives have been holding talks in Algiers over the past few days to thrash out security and political concerns raised by the CMA.

On Friday they are expected to sign two documents in Algiers, aimed at stopping hostilities across Mali and "to resolve the situation in Menaka," said Hamdi

He was referring to a flashpoint town in the northern desert seized from rebels by pro-government fighters in April, which has seen an uptick in violence.

The Bamako government said Thursday one of the documents to be signed concerns "security arrangements", paving the way for the implementation of a final agreement.

One of these documents indicates that the CMA would obtain guarantees to ensure that populations in the north would be represented in government institutions.

The CMA is also expected to have its members included in a security force for the north, according to the document.

The CMA has been demanding that an amended final deal recognize "Azawad," the name used by the Tuareg for the northern part of Mali, as a "geographic, political and juridical entity".

The Algiers Accord calls for the creation of elected regional assemblies but not autonomy or federalism, in deference to government concerns of separatism.

Mali was shaken by a coup in 2012 which cleared the way for Tuareg separatists to seize the towns and cities of the vast northern desert.

Al-Qaeda-linked militants then overpowered the Tuareg, taking control of northern Mali for nearly 10 months until they were ousted in a French-led military offensive.

But Mali remains deeply divided, with the Tuareg and Arab populations of the north accusing sub-Saharan ethnic groups in the more prosperous south of marginalizing them.

Northern Mali has seen an upsurge in attacks by pro-government militias and various factions of the Tuareg-led rebellion, leaving many dead on both sides.

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