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Port-au-Prince, Haiti • Top Haitian leaders have reached an agreement to install a provisional government less than a day before President Michel Martelly is scheduled to step down, an official with the Organization of American States told The Associated Press on Saturday.

Special mission leader Ronald Sanders said the interim president will be elected by Parliament for a term of 120 days. He said Prime Minister Evans Paul will remain in his position until lawmakers confirm a prime minister in upcoming days.

The interim government will continue an electoral process that began last year. It will hold a second round of presidential and legislative elections on April 24. A new president is scheduled to be installed on May 14 and will rule Haiti for the next five years.

"The country now has an opportunity for a fresh start," Sanders said, adding that Parliament would invite nominations for an interim president soon.

The deal, if it holds, will prevent an institutional vacuum when Martelly leaves office on Sunday and creates a roadmap for an elected leader to replace him in a few months. But there appeared to be no break in opposition protests in the capital Saturday and recent violence suggests discord is likely to continue.

Sanders said the deal was signed overnight following "very animated" negotiations on Friday between Martelly, the two leaders of Haiti's bicameral legislature and numerous lawmakers. Sanders, an Antiguan diplomat, is mission leader and chairman of the 35-nation OAS' permanent council.

A senior member of Haiti's ruling party who was not authorized to talk to the media told the AP that lawmakers will meet on Sunday to start the process to elect an interim president.

The OAS mission had been observing negotiations to resolve a standoff over a disputed round of voting in August and October that led officials to suspend a runoff election that had been scheduled for Jan. 24.

Opposition leaders have repeatedly said Martelly could not be part of the process, but Sanders, who stressed he was a witness and not a participant in the talks, said the deal was reached by elected officials who have the authority to do so.

"I don't think that anybody could say that it was a cooked-up agreement because it was done by people who didn't have the right or the authority to do it," Sanders said. "Indeed, there are no other two sets of entities in this country that could have signed a legitimate agreement."

When asked if a commission would be set up to verify results of the contested Oct. 25 vote, Sanders said: "I would not discount the idea that there would be some form of verification."

Haiti's Provisional Electoral Council has repeatedly rejected opposition demands for an independent review of the election results, fueling suspicions of vote-rigging.

OAS officials have held more than 25 meetings since they arrived last Sunday, but never met with Jude Celestin, a candidate who had been boycotting the presidential runoff, despite numerous invitations to him.

Celestin did not immediately return a call for comment. The OAS, however, did meet with other members of the opposition alliance known as the Group of Eight, which includes Celestin.

That alliance has been critical of the OAS mission, saying it would interfere in efforts to resolve the political crisis. The group had been seeking a transitional government led by a Supreme Court leader to ensure a commission verifies the disputed election results. Celestin was boycotting despite official returns that showed him coming in second and winning a spot in the runoff against Martelly's preferred successor, Jovenel Moise.

Shortly after the deal was reached, an anti-government protest broke out in downtown Port-au-Prince and the Vision 2000 radio station reported that more than a dozen men in the green uniforms of Haiti's disbanded military burned down a police station on a road leading to the coastal town of Arcahaie, north of the capital. The station said they also robbed a small bank, burned cars and fired guns into the air. Calls to officials to ask about the reports went unanswered.

It was not clear if the incidents were related to the new agreement.