Malaysia and the Philippines agreed today to try to speed up Manila's peace talks with Muslim separatists being hosted by Kuala Lumpur, Philippines President Gloria Arroyo and a Malaysian envoy said.

Arroyo received Othman Abdul Razak, an adviser to Malaysia's Prime Minister Abdullah Badawi, at Malacanang presidential palace to discuss the talks with the Moro Islamic Liberation Front (MILF), a joint statement said.

A Philippine negotiating panel is expected to fly to Kuala Lumpur shortly to resume peace talks that began about two years ago with the signing of a ceasefire.

"The president concurred with Datuk Othman on the need to put the talks on a faster track and at the same time gain international support and recognition," the statement said.

The Arroyo government announced last year it wanted to sign a peace treaty with the MILF as early as this year, bringing a political settlement to a decades-old rebellion being waged in the south by a large Muslim minority. The Philippines is predominantly Roman Catholic.

Very optimistic

Othman and Arroyo are "very optimistic that an agreement on the issue of ancestral domain can be achieved sooner than expected and this may well lead to the final peace agreement," the statement said.

Filipino officials have said Manila was open to the idea of sharing with the Muslims earnings from land they have claimed as part of their ancestral domain.

The land came under state control when the Philippines was colonized by Spain in the 16th century.

The two officials said they also discussed "the plausible need for widening the participation of other countries" in an international military contingent monitoring the ceasefire in the Mindanao region of the southern Philippines.

Troops from Malaysia, Libya and Brunei now make up the monitoring team.