Plans to select Africa's five teams for the 2006 World Cup by using the Nations Cup as a qualifying tournament have been scrapped by the Confederation of African Football.

Instead, a complicated procedure is proposed so that one set of continental qualifiers will be used to choose the teams for both competitions.

There will be five qualifying groups, with the winners of each going to Germany 2006.

New 2006 plans

30 teams in qualifying Five groups of six teams Top team from each group goes to Germany 2006 Top three teams from each group go to Egypt 2006

In addition the qualifiers will determine the 16 teams that will contest the Nations Cup in Egypt in the same year.

Caf said that many African nations realised they would lose out on much-needed television and marketing revenues if there was a significantly reduced qualifying programme.

The new proposals will be put to Fifa's World Cup organising committee which meets in Madrid next week.

Big changes

The new plans would leave 30 nations in the qualification race after an initial preliminary round.

They would be divided into five groups and would play a round-robin competition.

The group winners would qualify for both the World Cup and the Nations Cup, while the runners-up and third place finishers would also make Egypt '06.

Caf officials said they may still make minor modifications to the process, but agreed that the general principle had been accepted.

The decision follows a similar meeting on Wednesday which proposed drastic changes to the three annual African club competitions.

Caf is seeking to better exploit the possibility of television and marketing revenue.

The African Champions League is to be expanded in 2004 and the African Cup Winners' Cup and the Caf Cup combined into a single tournament, as has been done in Europe.