Thailand's military government said on Thursday peace talks with Muslim separatists operating in the far south of the country would resume in Malaysia, but no agreement would be signed unless the insurgents observed a cease-fire.

The separatists from the far-south Muslim-majority provinces of Yala, Pattani and Narathiwat have been blamed for an unprecedented string of bombings last month in several tourist towns that killed four people and wounded dozens.

A decades-old insurgency in the deep south of predominately Buddhist Thailand flared in 2004 and more than 6,500 people have been killed since then, according to the independent monitoring group Deep South Watch.