The Philippines’ main Muslim separatist group has promised to hasten efforts to remove child soldiers from its ranks, the UN said yesterday, and it hopes to reach a similar deal with Maoist rebels.Radhika Coomaraswamy, UN special representative for children and armed conflict, has met government officials and separatist and Maoist leaders to try to secure commitments to spare children from the two long-running insurgencies.Coomaraswamy said the Moro Islamic Liberation Front (MILF) had agreed to stop recruiting child soldiers and send home those already fighting, while the Maoists’ National Democratic Front (NDF) had agreed to talks on the issue.“It is the first time that we have been able to reach out to the National Democratic Front and I am hopeful that we will be able to sign an action plan as soon as possible,” she said.Army spokesman Arnulfo Burgos said about a dozen child soldiers fighting for the Maoists had been killed this year, with 121 captured and 215 having surrendered.In August 2009, the MILF signed an agreement with UNICEF to stop recruiting children and give them access to education, health and other services provided by the UN and other agencies.Coomaraswamy said the MILF had been identifying child soldiers since August 2010, and had agreed to have the registration completed in nine months, around the end of 2011.“We have about 600 children registered at the moment,” she said. “We expect it to be in the early thousands. We do not want them in armed groups, we want them in schools.”About three-quarters of 600 registered child soldiers from the MILF are boys, including an eight-year-old serving as a rebel messenger. Most of these children are related to MILF combatants, said Vanessa Tobin, UNICEF’s country representative.Both insurgencies date back to the late 1960s, and taken together, have killed 160,000 people, besides hobbling development in the poor but resource-rich Southeast Asian state.On Thursday, Manila’s chief peace negotiator, Alexander Padilla, told foreign correspondents the Maoist guerrillas had been targeting recruitment efforts at drop-outs and out-of-school children in poor rural communities.Coomaraswamy said the recruitment of child soldiers in the Philippines was not widespread, but still a problem to be dealt with.