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COTABATO, Philippines: Malaysian-led peace monitors have returned to the troubled southern Philippines for the first time since Muslim rebels launched a wave of deadly attacks in 2008, officials said on Monday.
The team's work is primarily to ensure a truce holds on the island of Mindanao between the government and the 12,000-strong Moro Islamic Liberation Front (MILF) while the two sides negotiate a peace settlement.
"With the redeployment of the International Monitoring Team, the peace talks are back on track," Foreign Undersecretary Rafael Seguis, who is also the government's chief peace negotiator with the rebels, said in a statement.
"It will also strengthen the security monitoring in the area."
However, the arrival of the monitors comes just a few weeks after the MILF said it was unlikely a deal would be reached with the government of President Gloria Arroyo, who is constitutionally mandated to step down on June 30.
The first batch of monitors, composed of a 20-man delegation from Malaysia, Brunei, Libya and Japan, landed at Cotabato city airport on Mindanao amid tight security on Sunday night.
The other members of the 60-person team are to arrive in the coming weeks.
Malaysia has been brokering the peace talks, which are aimed at ending the MILF's 32-year separatist insurgency that has killed over 150,000 people.
The monitors first arrived on Mindanao in 2004, following the first major ceasefire between the two sides the previous year.
But they pulled out of Mindanao in September 2008 after the MILF launched attacks to avenge a court ruling that outlawed a proposed deal to give the rebels control over what they say is their ancestral land.
About 400 people were killed and 700,000 displaced at the height of the fighting, before a new ceasefire was signed last year. - AFP/yb/de
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