The Kuala Lumpur High Court has ordered former communist guerrilla leader Chin Peng to prove his citizenship as part of his legal battle to return home after 46 years in exile.

Chin Peng, the former secretary-general of the outlawed Communist Party of Malaya (CPM), is taking legal action against the government after it rejected his request in 2003 to return to visit his ancestral graves and launch his autobiography.

High Court judge Mohamad Zabidin Mohamad Diah on Tuesday ordered 84-year-old Chin Peng, who lives in Thailand, to produce his birth certificate and citizenship papers before he can proceed with the legal action.

"Chin Peng's main application is made based on the claim that he is a Malaysian. Therefore it is relevant and important for him to produce his birth certificate and citizenship papers," Mohamad Zabidin said in The Star .

Chin Peng's lawyer, Darshan Singh Khaira, said he would file an appeal Wednesday because the ruling could effectively derail his client's case.

"We are filing an appeal against the judgment today. His documents were seized by (authorities) a long time ago. If we don't have them, how can we produce them?" Darshan told AFP .

But Chin Peng's main argument is that under the December 1989 peace accord signed with the government, CPM members were acknowledged as Malaysians and they were entitled to return to the country, he added.

Chin Peng, who won the Order of the British Empire (OBE) and two medals for helping the British fight the Japanese in Malaya during World War II, later led the CPM in a guerrilla campaign against the British colonial and Malay governments between 1948 and 1960.

The government in 2003 turned down his request to return on grounds he was still linked to a banned organisation with a "history of perpetrating terrorism" in the country.

Born Ong Boon Hua in Sitiawan in Malaysia's northern Perak state in 1923, Chin Peng left Malaysia in 1961. He has since published in Singapore his autobiography, Alias Chin Peng: My Side of History.