President Gloria Arroyo has asked Malaysia to send a "ceasefire observer team" to the Philippines as her government prepares to restart peace talks with Muslim separatists, her spokesman said today.

"We are interested in the creation of a ceasefire observer team," presidential spokesman Ignacio Bunye said over government radio.

"And this has been formally relayed by Foreign Affairs Secretary Blas Ople to his counterpart in Malaysia," he said.

Final clearance

Malaysia has been hosting exploratory and unofficial negotiations between rebels from the Moro Islamic Liberation Front (MILF), the country's largest Muslim separatist group, and the government.

Ople said Malaysian authorities were open to the idea of sending peace monitors "but they need a final clearance from higher authorities".

The peace monitoring team would be chaired by Malaysia and its proposed members are Bangladesh, Bahrain and Libya, he said.

Ople today met with ambassadors from Organization of Islamic Conference (OIC) countries, which he said would be individually invited to "contribute to the peace and development" in the southern island of Mindanao, where the MILF has its largest base.

The OIC brokered a peace pact between Manila and the former Muslim separatist Moro National Liberation Front (MNLF) in 1996 and Ople said the pan-Islamic body was "very happy" with its implementation.

The MILF, which splintered from the MNLF in 1978, was left out of the deal.

Resuming talks

The government said yesterday it was close to resuming negotiations to end the 12,500-strong MILF's 25-year rebellion for an independent Islamic state in the south.

This was after MILF chairman Salamat Hashim categorically renounced terrorism, fulfilling one of several conditions set by Arroyo for the resumption of peace talks.

Bunye reiterated Wednesday that peace talks would only start once Hashim came out of hiding and sat at the negotiating table.

The rebels on Tuesday released a statement saying Hashim was "ready to lead the negotiations", but Bunye said government peace negotiators were still awaiting an "official reply on the matter".

Bunye said any agreement with the MILF should be a "comprehensive settlement -- political, economic, social".

"These peace talks should result in a complete package," he said.

Bomb blasts

Arroyo has blamed the MILF for a spate of bombings and attacks that have left about 100 dead in the south of the country since March.

Philippine police and military officials have also linked the MILF to the Jemaah Islamiah, a regional Islamic group blamed for the Bali attack that left more than 200 people dead in Indonesia last year.

The military said Wednesday troops had overrun an MILF base near the southern town of Kabuntalan on Mindanao and discovered bomb-making materials, including three sacks of gunpowder, blasting caps and pipes.

The discovery "indicates that this area has been used as the MILF's bomb and weapons factory," the military said. - AFP