Malaysia will be allowed to quiz a captured top leader of the Filipino kidnap-for-ransom group Abu Sayyaf who remains under tight guard at a military hospital, a Philippine official said today.

Galib Andang, popularly known as Commander Robot, was shot and captured last week. He had kidnapped 21 tourists and workers in a cross-border raid from a Malaysian resort in 2000.

Malaysian defense minister Najib Razak had said that a team was being prepared to interview Andang, adding that information obtained from him would be useful to check crime along a common sea border between the two countries.

While the Philippine military will have the first crack at drawing information from Andang, Manila is committed to regional cooperation against terrorism, deputy presidential spokesman Ricardo Saludo said.

"In that light we would certainly give due consideration to requests from countries with whom we are cooperating to stamp out the threat of international terrorism," Saludo told reporters.

All the hostages taken by Andang ( photo ) in 2000 had been released in batches after payments of ransom amounting to as much as 25 million dollars, government's former chief negotiator Robert Aventajado said in a recently published book.

The Abu Sayyaf is a rag-tag band of self-proclaimed Islamic militants regarded by both Manila and the US government as a terrorist organization.

Security officials say the group once had loose links with Osama bin Laden's al Qaeda network. - AFP