The government said it would deploy a new paramilitary force in its territorial waters following international pressure to tighten security in the vital Malacca Straits.

The uniformed maritime agency would act as a law enforcement body in peacetime and a combatant during war, parliament was told by the Minister in the Prime Minister's Department, Nazri Abdul Aziz.

The new agency, to be placed under armed forces jurisdiction to help defend Malaysia in an emergency, crisis or war, would begin operations next March, he said.

It was created to bring maritime enforcement under one roof to ensure a more effective and orderly control of territorial waters and to use available resources to the maximum, Nazri said.

Maritime law enforcement was currently carried out by 11 government departments and agencies involving 5,000 personnel and more than 400 vessels, Nazri was quoted as saying by the official Bernama news agency.

Malaysian waters include part of the Malacca Straits - a narrow waterway slicing it from the Indonesian island of Sumatra - which carries half the world's oil and a third of its trade.

The United States and neighbouring Singapore recently expressed concern about security in the piracy-prone straits, suggesting that terrorists could hijack a huge oil or gas tanker and use it as a floating bomb in a maritime version of Sept 11.

No US patrol

But Malaysia has ruled out the idea of US marines helping to patrol the waterway, saying such a move would merely provoke Islamic militants.

Defence Minister Najib Razak has said Malaysia would work more closely with the US against regional terrorism, but insisted US forces would not be allowed to join "interdiction" operations in the straits.

Malaysia, a mainly-Muslim nation, has detained more than 90 alleged Islamic militants, most of them accused of membership in the al-Qaeda-linked Jemaah Islamiah group responsible for a series of bombings in the region. - AFP