The leader of the Philippines' largest Muslim separatist group is prepared for extended negotiations to end the long-running insurgency in the south.

But the Moro Islamic Liberation Front (MILF) will not sign any peace deal that falls short of the group's aspiration for a "Moro homeland" in Mindanao, rebel chief Murad Ebrahim has said.

As head of the 12,000-strong MILF which has waged a 27-year separatist rebellion on Mindanao island, Ebrahim, 54, says he has a duty to the country's marginalized Muslims who have been neglected by the government.

Malaysia is hosting the talks, which begis today, during which negotiators from both sides are expected to tackle the MILF's demand for control over its "ancestral domain."

"We will talk for however long it takes. But we will not sign anything that does not meet the aspirations of the Bangsamoro people," Ebrahim said in a rare interview with AFP in his camp in the southern Philippines late last year.

Ebrahim's mother died when he was an infant, and he was raised by his Islamic preacher father who believed the best education was only available in the Catholic-run Notre Dame University in Cotabato city.

He studied deligently, acquiring a good command of the English language that would serve him well in his future career as a rebel strategist and in meetings with diplomats from the Organization of Islamic Conference.

But he stuck to his Islamic roots and was among the group of young Muslim student leaders, along with Nur Misuari, Salamat Hashim and Ghazali Jaafar, who in the 1970s formed an organization that would later become the Moro National Liberation Front (MNLF).

Founder of the splinter group

Ebrahim at 22 dropped out of his civil engineering course, and in the next 30 years he led a difficult life in the jungles.

The MNLF first took up arms to protect Muslims in Mindanao being targetted by Christian paramilitary groups controlled by deposed dictator Ferdinand Marcos.

The group grew by the tens of thousands as the movement caught fire in Mindanao, the Philippines' mineral-rich southern island that the Muslims claim as their ancestral land. Hashim in 1978 broke off from the MNLF and the splinter group Moro Islamic Liberation Front (MILF) was born.

The MILF became the country's largest Muslim separatist group when the MNLF dropped its armed struggle and settled for limited autonomy in 1996, an agreement that has failed to alleviate the plight of Muslims in Mindanao.

According to MILF figures, combatants now number more than 120,000 - far higher than military estimates.