(AFP) Kelantan chief minister Nik Aziz Nik Mat who ordered that unattractive women should be given priority for state government jobs now says all women are "cute", according to a report today.

Nik Aziz, who is also the spiritual leader of opposition party PAS, had last year said that women who were "not pretty" should be recruited by the administration as those who were attractive could usually find rich husbands.

Following criticism by opposition parties, he told the state assembly on Monday, that no women were prohibited from working and that all women in the state were beautiful.

"There is no woman who is not cute in her own way," he was quoted as saying in the Sun newspaper.