The presence of Al-Qaeda-linked militants in the southern Philippines should not threaten weekend peace talks between Manila and the country's largest Muslim separatist group, peace broker Malaysia said tuesday.

Malaysian Foreign Minister Syed Hamid Albar met with Filipino Foreign Secretary Alberto Romulo in Manila today to "reiterate" Kuala Lumpur's commitment to host peace talks between Manila and the Moro Islamic Liberation Front (MILF) on April 16-18.

Syed Hamid, who attended an Association of Southeast Asian Nations ministerial meeting in the Philippines, was expected to fly later today to the main southern island of Mindanao to meet with leaders of the MILF ahead of the talks.

The 12,000-member MILF has been waging a separatist rebellion for an independent Islamic state on Mindanao since 1978 but opened preliminary peace talks with the government in 2003.

Syed Hamid will also inspect a Malaysian-led "international peace monitoring" team that has been observing the truce signed in July 2003.

Security analysts around the region have expressed fears that the Jemaah Islamiah, regarded as al-Qaeda's Southeast Asian chapter, was increasingly liaising with Muslim militants on Mindanao to carry out a wave of bombings.

The next Afghan

The US embassy Charge d'affaires in Manila, Joseph Mussomeli, had warned that Mindanao was becoming a "Mecca" for Islamic militants and could become the next Afghanistan.

Syed Hamid said it was important for both Manila and the MILF to "get rid of the root causes of dissatisfaction" and deny international support to armed militants.

He said clashes between the MILF and Philippine troops appeared to have been "tremendously reduced" since 2003, when both sides agreed to begin negotiations to end the rebellion.

"You can actually feel that there is a serious desire to find a long-term solution that is sustainable," the Malaysian official said.

"And I think that they (MILF and the Philippine government) are very well aware of the areas that need to find agreement (on)," he said.

"You want to narrow down differences and if you are able to do that, then it moves another step nearer to achieving the peace agreement."

Gangs of kidnappers and bandits

Philippine National Security Adviser Norberto Gonzales said intelligence services had monitored the presence of foreign Jemaah Islamiah militants in the south but said it was only a matter of time before they were rounded up.

While the government was keeping close watch over growing links between the JI and the smaller Abu Sayyaf group, Gonzales said he believed the MILF had been faithful to the terms of the peace process.

"The Abu Sayyaf is not part of the MILF, how can it complicate the peace talks? You know how notorious the Abu Sayyaf is, and they usually swing from kidnapping to religious fervor," he said.

Founded in the early 1990s by an Afghan-trained firebrand, the Abu Sayyaf disintegrated over the years into several rag-tag gangs of kidnappers and bandits.

It however has made the US State Department's list of foreign terrorist organizations for its daring kidnapping raids, which led to the deaths of two American hostages in 2002.

Washington and Manila have also linked the Abu Sayyaf to Osama bin Laden's al-Qaeda group.

The Abu Sayyaf claimed responsibility for three bomb attacks in Manila and the southern cities of Davao and General Santos that killed several people in February and was also blamed for last year's firebombing of a ferry on Manila bay which killed more than 100 people.