Sept 15 (Reuters) - The Philippines has offered to resume peace negotiations with the country's largest Muslim rebel group but only after it turns over three rogue field commanders, a senior official said on Monday. But the Moro Islamic Liberation Front (MILF) rebels have rejected the offer.

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Following are some key facts about the Philippine Muslim insurgency:

BACKGROUND:

-- Separatist conflict in the southern Philippines has claimed more than 120,000 lives over the last four decades. The Muslim minority in the south is largely located on the western and central part of the island of Mindanao, where there are cities with large Christian populations. About 20 percent of the region's 18 million people are believed to be Muslim.

-- The Muslim separatist Moro National Liberation Front (MNLF) started fighting for an independent Moro nation in 1968. The colonial Spanish term for followers of Islam, "Moro" or "moors", had been reclaimed by Filipino Muslims. It highlights the country's pre-Christian national identity -- Islam predates Christianity's 16th-century arrival by a few centuries.

-- Led by Nur Misuari, an ethnic Tausug from Sulu, an island province 960 km (600 miles) south of Manila, the MNLF launched a campaign for the independence of the thirteen Bangsa Moro (Muslim) tribes after Ferdinand Marcos imposed martial law in 1972.

-- A 1996 peace deal between MNLF and the government expanded the Autonomous Region in Muslim Mindanao (ARMM) in the south and MNLF leaders were installed as governors.

-- Today's tangled web of rebel factions grew out of the MNLF.

* FACTIONS:

-- Moro Islamic Liberation Front (MILF) - The MILF was formally organised in 1984, six years after a group of fundamentalist Muslims led by Islamic cleric Salamat Hashim broke away from the secular Moro National Liberation Front (MNLF).

-- Emphasising Islam over MNLF's secular ethno-nationalism, the MILF rode a rising tide of militancy through the 1990s.

-- The MILF is now the dominant insurgent group in the Muslim south, fighting and negotiating through three major cycles of conflict in 1997, 2000 and 2003, in an effort to win greater autonomy. Despite its focus on Islam, it also is overwhelmingly an ethno-nationalist insurgency.

-- Some 12,000 MILF militants live in Mindanao, the second-largest of the 7,107 Philippine islands.

-- Abu Sayyaf Group - The Abu Sayyaf, which translates as "Bearer of the Sword", was formed in 1991, when it split from the MNLF. It is the smallest Filipino militant group, with around 300 core fighters. Fighting for an independent Islamic nation in the Philippines, it is thought to have stronger international ties than the other Philippine groups.

-- The group was blamed for the worst terrorist attack in the Philippines when it bombed a domestic ferry near Manila Bay on February 2004, killing more than 100 people.

Source: Reuters; International Crisis Group

(Writing by Jijo Jacob, Editing by David Cutler and Sanjeev Miglani)

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