Intra-Asean trade may suffer if oil prices continue to climb amid rising fears of a US-led war on Iraq, Malaysia's trade minister Rafidah Aziz said today.

If oil importing countries needed to spend more, "their capacity to import other items would be diminished," she told a news conference ahead of an Association of Southeast Asian Nations economic ministers meeting in Brunei on Sept 11-15.

The spectre of war in Iraq "worries everybody I think. When that happens, the oil price will go through the ceiling, I'm sure."