MANILA - Philippine President Gloria Arroyo is to seek Malaysia's help to bring Filipino Muslim separatists to the negotiating table and end escalating violence in the southern Philippines, sources said today.

"The president will dispatch a special envoy tomorrow to meet with the acting Malaysian prime minister in a new bid to help end this bloodshed," a highly-placed source told AFP .

The Moro Islamic Liberation Front (MILF) has been blamed for a deadly airport blast and a series of bombings of power transmission lines as well as for a hostage-taking incident that left two government troops dead, among other violence in the country's troubled south in recent weeks.