Philippine govt and Muslim rebels to meet in Jeddah

MANILA, Mar 9 (Reuters) Representatives from the Philippine government, the country's oldest Muslim rebel group and the Organisation of the Islamic Conference (OIC) will meet in Saudi Arabia in July to try and salvage a key peace deal.

Sayyed Kassem El-Masry, an adviser to the OIC secretary-general, also said today that the organisation, which brokered the 1996 peace agreement between Manila and the Moro National Liberation Front (MNLF), expected the MNLF's detained chairman, Nur Misuari, to attend the July 10-15 meeting.

''He has to be there,'' El-Masry told reporters in Manila, where he met with government officials to hammer out preparations for the conference and reiterated the OIC's call for Misuari, currently under house arrest in the capital, to be released.

''We made our good offices with the government in order to expedite this legal process to allow Misuari to attend,'' El-Masry said. ''We hope that by July this legal hurdle will be finished and he's able to attend.'' Heralded as the solution to decades of bitter fighting between Muslim separatists and the mainly Catholic central government in Manila, the 1996 agreement floundered due to a lack of funds, poor implementation and opposition from hardliners.

Manila would like to salvage the pact before any deal with a rival rebel group, the Moro Islamic Liberation Front (MILF), and end a conflict that has killed more than 120,000 people and stunted development in a resource-rich region.

Talks with the MILF have been stalled since May over the size and wealth of a proposed ancestral homeland for 3 million Muslims in the south.

Angered by the failure of the 1996 agreement, Misuari, still an influential Muslim figure, led a botched rebellion in 2001 and has been detained since 2002.

The government has shown more leniency towards Misuari since last year, moving him from a jail to a villa in Manila in May.

REUTERS DKA VC1532