MANILA, PHILIPPINES - Britain will send experts in peace negotiations to the Philippines to help re-start stalled peace talks between Manila and Muslim separatist guerrillas in the south, diplomats said Saturday.

Experts who were involved in the peace talks in Northern Ireland will be consulted over contact between the Philippines government and the separatist Moro Islamic Liberation Front (MILF), said British ambassador Peter Beckingham.

Beckingham said the experts would not be involved in the actual negotiations but would instead 'talk with the government and the MILF and try and get ways in which the peace process can move along in the right direction.'

'The MILF and the Philippine government said they'd welcome someone who could talk about what happened in Northern Ireland and because there are similarities,' he added.

The plan which will see three or four experts dispatched to this country in the coming weeks, he said.

Beckingham said Philippine President Gloria Arroyo and then-British prime minister Tony Blair first agreed to the scheme when they met last December.

Beckingham said he met with MILF leaders a few weeks ago and they were also in favour of the idea.

The 12,000-strong MILF has been fighting to set up a separate Islamic state in the southern third of the largely-Christian Philippines since 1978.

The Philippines and the MILF signed a ceasefire in 2003 to open peace negotiations but the talks have been stalled over the issue of 'ancestral domain' where the MILF would exert authority.

In the latest blow to the talks, last month, Malaysia, which had been hosting the negotiations, announced that it was pulling out a team that had been monitoring the ceasefire in the south.

Just days ago, Muslim gunmen, including MILF fighters, forced hundreds of Christians to abandon their farms in the south, saying this was part of their ancestral lands.