Prime Minister Abdullah Ahmad Badawi today said Malaysia will not take control of any territory that belongs to neighbouring Indonesia but will defend its own territorial rights.

"Their territory is their territory and our territory is ours and we will definitely protect our territory," he was quoted as saying by Bernama news agency.

Abdullah said he was confident the maritime territorial dispute in the Sulawesi Sea off Borneo with Indonesia could be resolved through negotiations, adding that Malaysia had no intention to be embroiled in a conflict.

"We have no intention whatsoever. If there have been any intention to go to war, we will conduct ourselves in such a way. If there have been any intention to fight, we will speak in that manner.

"But those are not our intentions. That's not what we are looking for. Our intention is to maintain cordiality and to resolve the matter," he told a group of visiting Indonesian scholars.

Elite troops

Abdullah's remarks came after reports that Indonesia had sent seven navy frogmen to a small reef that both countries claim.

The elite troops were dropped on the Karang Unarang reef in the Sulawesi Sea from an aircraft, navy spokesman Lieutenant Colonel Guntur Wahyudi told the state-run Antara news agency without giving a date.

Indonesia and Malaysia, Southeast Asia's only predominantly Muslim countries, agreed last Wednesday to use dialogue to end the dispute centred on Kuala Lumpur's granting of an oil concession in the contested area.

Warships from both countries have come into close contact in the Sulawesi Sea east of Borneo several times since Feb 16 when energy giant Shell was given a concession by Malaysia's state oil company Petronas.

Jakarta says the blocks awarded by Petronas are outside Kuala Lumpur's sovereignty.

Malaysia and Indonesia have locked horns over the territory before. A dispute over the ownership of the two islands ended in December 2002 when an International Court of Justice ruling that they belong to Malaysia.

Indonesia declared war against Malaysia following sporadic tensions over the future of Borneo in 1963 after the British relinquished control. The conflict ended three years later.