President Gloria Arroyo is to ask Philippines legislators Tuesday to tone down their anti-Malaysian rhetoric after Kuala Lumpur deported thousands of illegal Filipino migrants, her spokesman said.

The mass deportations have triggered calls by Filipino politicians for Manila to revive its dormant claim on the resources-rich Malaysian state of Sabah, from where many the migrants were evicted over the past month.

Anger has been fuelled by allegations that the illegals have been mistreated, with social workers saying three Filipino children have died. Malaysia insists the deportees are being treated well.

Arroyo spokesman Ignacio Bunye said Sunday that the president wanted her countrymen "not to complicate the situation" by raising "unrelated" issues such as the Sabah claim.

"We have not abandoned that," he said, referring to the claim. "I don't think this is the time to revive it."

In Kuala Lumpur on Saturday, Prime Minister Mahathir Mohamad said Malaysia would temporarily halt the deportation of illegal Filipino workers to clear up claims they were being mistreated.

Bunye said Manila did not know how long the reprieve would last. The government has sent a fact-finding team to check on the conditions of Filipinos at holding centers for illegals in Malaysia.

He said Manila did not know exactly how many illegals were being sent back to the Philippines, but he estimated there had been about 50,000 "undocumented" Filipinos in Malaysia before the deportations started.

Longstanding claim on Sabah

Malaysia last month introduced new penalties including jail terms and whipping for illegal immigrants, prompting the mass exodus home.

Manila has a longstanding claim on Sabah, which it says was part of the Islamic sultanate of Sulu in the southern Philippines before Malaysia obtained independence.

Arroyo said Saturday the Sabah issue "must be firmly delinked from the issue of deportees," accusing certain Filipino politicians, whom she did not identify, of grandstanding and "diplomatic adventurism".

Bunye said Sunday Arroyo wanted to gauge the "general sentiment" of members of Congress to discuss the Sabah issue.

"In the meantime, they should stop issuing their own press releases because it is not helpful if we're signalling that we do not have a unified stand on this," Bunye said.

Philippine Foreign Secretary Blas Ople criticized politicians for stirring up calls to revive Manila's claim to Sabah.

"The emotional passions generated by the mass deportation crisis from Sabah, which some politicians are exacerbating to their own interest, are again bringing to the fore the latent issues on Sabah," he wrote in the Manila Bulletin on Sunday.

"I personally believe that there is no substitute for patient diplomacy to resolve these issues and that irrational passions on both sides of the Sulu Sea should be held in check."

Ople recalled that a decision by former president Fidel Ramos in 1993 to put claim on the backburner, while not formally relinquishing it, had "inaugurated, as Ramos intended, a new era of Philippine-Malaysian relations." AFP