It was love at first sight for Brunei's ruler Sultan Hassanal Bolkiah when he spotted the young Malaysian woman who has reportedly become his second wife, a newspaper report said today.

The 58-year-old head of the oil-rich state married 26-year-old former Malaysian television journalist Azrinaz Mazhar Hakim in a private ceremony in Kuala Lumpur on Friday night, according to the New Straits Times .

Azrinaz had spent several years as a broadcast journalist and later as a newscaster with private station TV3 before resigning in May.

The Malay-language Utusan Malaysia on Tuesday quoted friends of the bride as saying that the marriage took place after a brief courtship, and that the two met while Azrinaz was on assignment in Brunei about two years ago.

"During the assignment, the Sultan of Brunei caught a glimpse of Azrinaz and immediately fell in love. After that, the Sultan would watch her reading the news on TV3," one of the unnamed friends said.

The New Straits Times on Sunday cited an unnamed guest as saying the ceremony was attended by family members, relatives and close friends of the couple.

The report could not be immediately confirmed in Brunei, where the private lives of the royal family are often shrouded in secrecy.

Malaysian tabloid Harian Metro on Monday reported that the wedding was held under tight security and that guests were banned from bringing cameras and carefully checked before being allowed in.

A neighbour of the bride was quoted as saying that he and his family were invited to attend without being told who the groom was.

"Azrinaz's family only invited us to attend the wedding and they said 'you will see,'" he told the tabloid.

A new venture

Harian Metro said that Azrinaz's modest family home in a Kuala Lumpur suburb was empty, and the neighbour said he had been entrusted with monitoring the house.

Awarded "TV3's Most Promising Journalist" in 2000, Azrinaz said when departing the station that she wanted to "venture into other undertakings," the New Straits Times said.

Following her departure, rumours had been rife that she would marry the sultan, whose vast wealth is fuelled by his family's control of the oil-based economy.

In February 2003 he abruptly divorced his second wife, former flight attendant Mariam Abdul Aziz, who is mother to two of his four sons and two of his six daughters, and ordered all her royal titles withdrawn.

Polygamy is legal in the Muslim nation and the sultan remains married to his first wife Anak Saleha, whom he wed in 1967.

Brunei, a cradle-to-grave welfare state on the north coast of Borneo island, is the world's fourth largest producer of natural gas and third largest oil producer in Southeast Asia after Indonesia and Malaysia.

The sultan was once rated the world's richest man, with personal wealth estimated at more than 40 billion dollars. But his fortune is said to have dwindled in recent years, partly because of the 1997-98 financial crisis.