Ansar Dine, the Tuareg-dominated Malian Islamist group under pressure from the escalating French-led military assault in the country, has split in two, according to reports.
Former fighters, once loyal to its leader Iyad Ag Ghali, have said they are prepared both to negotiate and also fight their one-time comrades.
The fracturing of Ansar Dine – if confirmed – would be a significant blow to the confederation of Islamist groups who seized Mali's north last year.
According to some reports former members of the Tuareg separatist MNLA had also joined the new group named the Islamic Movement for Azawad which is being led by Algabass Ag Intallah.
The group insisted on Wednesday that it was composed entirely of Malians and was seeking an "inclusive political" dialogue to bring its conflict with Bamako to an end. It added that it rejected terrorism and extremism.
The fighters of Ansar Dine have long been seen by those who have been seeking a negotiated end to the Malian crisis as most vulnerable to being split away from their allies in al-Qaida in the Islamic Maghreb (AQIM) and the Movement for Unity and Jihad in West Africa (MUJAO).
Ag Intallah is an important tribal leader from one of the Tuareg noble clans whose power base is around Kidal, about 900 miles (1,500km) north of the capital, Bamako.
He had been sent to represent Ansar Dine in negotiations in Burkina Faso where, it appears, he was persuaded to change sides.
According to France's RFI broadcaster he has been joined in the dissident group by Ansar Dine's former spokesman Mohamed Ag Arib.
According to RFI the new group is seeking a cessation of hostilities in the region around Kidal and Menaka, formerly controlled by Ansar Dine.
Other areas, including the cities of Gao and Timbuktu, are held by AQIM and MUJAO.
"We want to wage our war and not that of AQIM," said Ag Intallah, referring to al-Qaida's north African wing which has been at the heart of the takeover of the vast desert north by Malian and foreign Islamist fighters.
"There has to be a ceasefire so there can be talks," he said, speaking from the town of Kidal, a Tuareg stronghold in north-east Mali seized by Ansar Dine last year. "The aim is to speak about the situation in the north."
He said the new group, which would be based in Kidal, had been in touch with mediators in Burkina Faso and Algerian authorities. He said rebel demands would be for a broad autonomy rather than independence for the north.
Ansar Dine had formed a loose alliance with AQIM and MUJAO to impose sharia law in the desert and mountain area the size of Texas.
It was not immediately possible to confirm how many fighters would leave the ranks of Ansar Dine to join the new group.
International negotiators have long sought to prize apart the Islamist alliance by offering talks to Ansar Dine and Tuareg separatists, on the condition that they break with AQIM. Ag Intallah was a senior Ansar Dine negotiator in talks last year.
But preliminary negotiations broke down last month after Ansar Dine called off a ceasefire amid reports of splits between moderates seeking a political solution and radicals with deep links to al-Qaida.
Ag Intallah would not give a figure for his supporters, as he said a list was still being drawn up, but he said most Malians in the ranks of Ansar Dine had joined his faction.
Estimates for the total number of Islamist fighters in Mali vary but do not exceed roughly 3,000.
Ag Intallah said some members of the Tuareg separatist MNLA movement, which has fought AQIM in the north, had also joined his group.
A spokesman for the MNLA was not immediately available for comment.
The emergence of a new "moderate wing" of Ansar Dine has come as it was reported that a column of Chadian soldiers had been despatched towards Gao, and as the joint French and west African effort to reclaim the country's north was gaining pace.
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