Hundreds of Touareg rebels laid down their arms in the northern Malian city of Kidal on Tuesday, symbolizing their readiness to negotiate a lasting peace with the Malian army, the AFP is reporting.

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Peace talks between the government and the Alliance for Democracy and Change (ADC), a faction of the Touareg movement, will be mediated by Algeria along the lines of the 2006 Algiers agreement. The terms of the new agreement are expected to relinquish the rebel groups’ claim to an autonomous state in the north in exchange for renewed commitment by the government to step up development efforts in the three northern regions of Kidal, Gao and Timbuktu.

Bloody skirmishes between the army and rebel forces, led by Ibrahima Ag Bahanga and the ADC, have escalated in the northern region of Mali over several months. In December of 2008, Touareg rebels killed 14 Malian soldiers in an attack on a military post at Nampala, near the Mauritanian border. In retaliation, the army launched a security offensive in January 2009, killing 31 of Bahanga’s rebels, taking prisoners, and seizing arms and vehicles. The defeated Bahanga, who trained as an Arab Legion mercenary in Libya like many other Touareg rebels, had requested Libya’s mediation in the peace process and was refused. He abandoned the peace process, seeking refuge with his troops in Libya. The ADC will represent Mali’s Touaregs in the upcoming peace talks.

Following the rejection of their claim for an independent central Saharan state, Touaregs launched an organized revolt in northern Mali and Niger in the 1990s that has displaced hundreds of thousands of civilians into neighbouring countries like Burkina Faso. The nomads’ traditional territories contain considerable reserves of gold and uranium. Peace agreements forged in 1995 and 2006 have proven incapable of resolving the dispute.