Malaysia has set up an independent team to probe allegations a lawyer fixed judicial appointments with a senior judge, the deputy prime minister said Tuesday.

Najib Razak's announcement comes after pressure from opposition and rights groups for an investigation into the issue and ahead of a planned rare protest march by lawyers on Wednesday.

"The government of Malaysia today decided to set up a special independent panel to investigate the authenticity of the video recording that purportedly linked a private lawyer in the appointment of a judge," he told reporters.

"This decision was taken in view of the accusation and speculation that has been made over the recording, which can raise doubts about the credibility of the judicial system," he added.

Former deputy premier Anwar Ibrahim unleashed a furore last Wednesday by releasing a video clip that purportedly showed a well-connected lawyer telling a judge over the telephone that he would push his name forward for a senior appointment.

Najib said the panel comprised Haidar Mohamad Noor, former chief judge of Malaya, Mahadev Shankar, a retired court of appeal judge, and activist Lee Lam Thye.

The panel would begin their task soon and prepare a report for the government "in a matter of weeks," he said.

"They will report back to the government and the findings will be made public later on," Najib added.

Anwar had said that he believed the conversation, allegedly conducted in 2002, had affected the outcome of his treatment in the courts.

The ex-deputy was heir apparent to former prime minister Mahathir Mohamad until his sacking in 1998, when he was hit with sodomy and corruption charges that landed him in jail for six years.

The sodomy conviction was later overturned but the corruption verdict stands, barring Anwar from standing for public office until April 2008.

Human rights group Aliran called for an investigation into several legal cases in which it said the presiding judges had leap-frogged more senior judges.

"All these cases only confirmed that the ugly hands of politics were pervasive in our system of justice, which was manipulated as a political tool," Aliran president P. Ramakrishnan said in a statement.