Algerian diplomat, al-Akhdar al-Ibrahimi, has agreed to replace Kofi Annan as the UN envoy to Syria.

Algerian diplomat, al-Akhdar al-Ibrahimi, has agreed to replace Kofi Annan as the UN envoy to Syria.

"He has agreed to take the post but with an amended title; he has new ideas about the approach to take," Reuters news agency quoted a UN source as saying, referring to al-Ibrahimi.

The source said that the veteran Algerian diplomat who had been undecided for days about whether to accept the offer of the post from UN Secretary-General Ban Ki-moon, did not want to be seen as a mere replacement of Annan but wanted a reconfigured title and fresh approach to his mandate as a peace broker.

It remains unclear what al-Ibrahimi's formal link with the Arab League, if any, will be, diplomats said. They said Ibrahimi would be based in New York, unlike Annan, who is based in Geneva.
Syria had only accepted Annan as a U.N. representative of the United Nations, not the Arab League.

Another source familiar with the situation said that if Ibrahimi took the job as the new UN -Arab League mediator, he would not continue with Annan's "failed approach" to the conflict but would seek a fresh strategy.
Al-Ibrahimi was the UN envoy in Afghanistan after the September 11, 2001 attacks and in Iraq after the 2003 US-led invasion.

He was Algerian foreign minister from 1991 to 1993, and he helped end Lebanon's civil war in the late 1980s as an Arab League envoy.
Annan, a former UN secretary-general and Nobel Peace Prize laureate, stepped down at the end of August after six months in the job, saying his six-point peace plan had not received much international support.