Prime Minister Abdullah Ahmad Badawi said that engaging Muslims in dialogue is not enough to combat terrorism.

"In order to succeed, there must be quality opportunities for them to have," he said.

He said that the leaders from the Asia Pacific Economic Cooperation (Apec) leaders spent time discussing terrorism and how it should not be linked to the Islamic faith.

The root causes of terrorism must be addressed, but anti-terrorism measures that target the Muslim community as a whole would be counter-productive, he told a news conference at the end of the Apec summit in the port city of Busan, South Korean.

"The danger is that if they are deprived, if they are alienated... then this will become yet another kind of cause which will drive people to being unsatisfied, unhappy.

"The next step can be terrorism if that is the path they choose in order to get attention to what they want, their demands."

Several Apec members such as the United States, Indonesia, Russia and the Philippines have been the targets of attacks.

War's second front

Southeast Asia, which has seven Apec members, has been described by the United States as the second front in its global "war on terror".

The Jemaah Islamiah (JI), an al Qaeda-affiliated group blamed for several attacks in Indonesia, operates in the region. Top leaders remain at large and the group is believed to train in the southern Philippines.

Asia-Pacific leaders vowed on Saturday to eliminate weapons of mass destruction and dismantle the "terrorist" groups that have carried out a series of deadly attacks in the region.

"We condemned terrorist acts in the region that took thousands of lives and aimed to destabilise economic prosperity and security in the Asia-Pacific region," the 21 Apec leaders said.

Terror attacks "constitute a clear challenge", the leaders said in a statement released at the end of their two-day annual summit in the South Korean city of Busan.

"To confront these ongoing threats, we reaffirmed our commitment... to review progress on our efforts to dismantle trans-boundary terrorist groups, eliminate the threat of weapons of mass destruction and their means of delivery," the leaders said.

US President George W Bush, Russian President Vladimir Putin and Chinese President Hu Jintao agreed to the statement that also stressed that any new counter-terrorism measures must comply with laws on human rights.

Surface-to-air missiles

Meanwhile, Apec leaders also "encouraged" the implementation of measures to make trade and travel more secure.

These included pledges on maritime security and an agreement to assess airports by the end of 2006 to reduce the vulnerability of commercial planes to shoulder-fired surface-to-air missiles.

Washington had been pushing hard for the adoption of tighter measures to counter the threat posed to civil aviation by the Man-Portable Air Defense Systems, known by the acronym Manpads.

The Apec forum only makes non-binding agreements.