Esperon told the Philippine Daily Inquirer’s Mindanao bureau over lunch Friday that the rebels had pulled out of the towns of Midsayap, Aleosan, Alamada and Pigcawayan.

The rebels were reported to have occupied nine villages in five towns in North Cotabato in Mindanao, days after the land agreement between the government and the MILF was halted by the a Supreme Court order. It was to be signed by both parties in Kuala Lumpur.

North Cotabato governor Jesus Sacdalan said, however, that while some MILF forces had left the occupied areas, including Baliki village in Midsayap town, fresh rebel troops had begun arriving.

“We want a total pullout. If they will not leave by morning (Saturday), we will implement the law,” Sacdalan warned.

Brig Gen Reynaldo Sealana, co-chair of the joint Coordinating Committee for the Cessation of Hostilities (CCCH), said the rebels “began to move” at around 4:30pm Friday.

“We supervised their movement,” Sealana told reporters in the Camp Aguinaldo military general headquarters in Metro Manila by phone.

He said the joint CCCH had deployed a joint monitoring team to ensure that the military or civilian volunteer organisations would not enter the concerned areas until the MILF had made a complete withdrawal.

He added that the joint CCCH would return to the villages Saturday morning to check on the MILF troop movement.

MILF civil-military affairs chief Eid Kabalu also said members of the international monitoring team had been deployed to address problems that could aggravate the situation.

Sealana said that in the villages of Dualing and Dunguan in Aleosan town, he saw around 100 MILF rebels move by foot or on pump boats toward the neighbouring province of Maguindanao.

He said the rebels were informed during negotiations that a resolution had been signed by the joint CCCH and the international monitoring team stating that the MILF should “reposition its forces” to their original areas prior to July 27, when five skirmishes occurred in North Cotabato between the rebels and government troops.

“We told them that we should honour the joint resolution, which indicated that the MILF chief of staff had signed a letter directing its forces, except for the local MILF, to pull out and return to where they came from,” Sealana said.

The MILF central committee had also given orders to its troops to “reposition”.

However, Kabalu himself admitted that there had been no “repositioning” of troops as yet.

“This is not easy,” he said. “The CCCH has a proposal submitted to the MILF leadership. We will set up a joint monitoring team. Measures are being drawn up. What we are more concerned with is the aftermath of this. If it’s repositioning for the sake of repositioning, it will only be a cycle.”

In Cotabato City, Ghazali Jaafar, MILF vice chair for political affairs, said both sides had agreed that rebel forces would 'gradually' move out of the villages.

“We are moving out slowly and we are doing it because we recognise the existence of a ceasefire agreement,” he said.

Maj Gen Armando Cunanan, chief of the Eastern Mindanao Command of the Armed Forces of the Philippines (AFP), said peace had been restored in the occupied areas.

Cunanan said the military did not have to use force in convincing the rebels to withdraw because diplomatic efforts aimed at preserving the peace process had succeeded. He said it had become Esperon’s policy “not to promote the culture of war".