Malaysia, choking on the haze from hundreds of ground fires in Indonesia, has offered to help its neighbour tackle the blazes during crisis talks.

Almost 1,000 forest fires and blazes started to clear land on the Indonesian island of Sumatra are blamed for the smog that has blanketed peninsular Malaysia for more than a week, disrupting airports and shipping, angering residents and raising fears over public health.

Malaysia declared a state of emergency in some areas as the air pollution index soared.

Malaysian Environment Minister Adenan Satem offered assistance during a meeting with Indonesian Forestry Minister Malam Sambat Kaban at Medan airport in Sumatra.

"The meeting was cordial ... The Malaysian side offered help to deal with the fires," forestry ministry spokesman Fauzi Masud told AFP .

Masud said the two sides agreed to cooperate on preventing people using fire to clear land and to carry out cloud-seeding to induce rain.

"We are offering assistance on three aspects," Adenan was quoted as saying by the official Malaysian news agency Bernama .

He said Malaysia was offering to help extinguish the fires, carry out cloud-seeding and draw up a long-term programme to prevent a recurrence.

Public anger

Anger is mounting in Malaysia over the fires, an annual event this time of year as farmers use the dry season to burn forest and clear land.

Malaysian Foreign Minister Syed Hamid Albar said ministers from the two neighbours would also meet in Jakarta on yesterday in hopes of coping with the haze and avoiding any longer-term political crisis.

"We must sit down and discuss and consult. This is the common interest," he said in Kuala Lumpur. "We cannot go into an open conflict. That will not be good for the region."

But Malaysia's opposition leader Lim Kit Siang said Indonesia must take action and douse the fires amid reports that the smog could continue for weeks.

"Malaysians want an explanation why the Indonesian government cannot stop the haze from becoming a tragic annual event," he said. "As the source of haze is in Sumatra, Malaysians are powerless to do anything."

Indonesian President Susilo Bambang Yudhoyono has called for "more serious" measures to tackle the fires.

"The president expressed his dissatisfaction over measures in handling the fires ... and he wished to see that forest fires are being handled more seriously," his spokesman Dino Pati Jalal said, according to the Antara news agency.

Indonesian officials said hundreds of rangers had been deployed but were being hampered by the remote locations of the fires and a lack of water.

Another forestry ministry spokesman, Masyud, said the government did not yet plan to impose penalties for land-clearing but "actively continues to urge people to stop the habit".

"This is not just Indonesia's problem but it is Malaysia's as well since land-clearing is also taking place there," he said.

Farmers responsible

Satellite images taken yesterday showed 993 fires in Riau and North Sumatra provinces on Sumatra, said Israr Albar, a forestry ministry official in charge of forest fires.

"More than 60 percent of hot spots were caused by land-clearing by farmers and they are not in the forests," Albar said.

The images showed the haze covering much of Malaysia mainly came from Riau, said Kusnadi, a forest fire official from Kalimantan on the Indonesian part of Borneo island.

"The direction of the wind that blows to Malaysia come from the Sumatra region, based on satellite images," said Kusnadi.

With visibility in places down to 200 metres or less, Kuala Lumpur's second airport was closed until further notice while the Malacca Strait, one of the world's busiest shipping lanes, has become hazardous.

Hundreds of schools in Kuala Lumpur and surrounding districts were ordered to close until Monday because of the worsening haze, which is causing a rise in asthma attacks and respiratory conditions.

In 1997 and 1998, choking haze caused mainly by Indonesian forest fires enveloped parts of Southeast Asia, including Malaysia, for months.