A top government official said Malaysia will not race to join the International Criminal Court, although many other countries have done so, state media reported Wednesday.

"There's no need for us to rush headlong into it," Ahmad Shabery Cheek, foreign ministry's parliamentary secretary, told lawmakers, according to state news agency Bernama.

Ahmad also noted that "many other big powers" had yet to join.

Signing the "Rome statute," which established the court, or ICC, would force Malaysia to change some of its existing laws, and there were concerns over the interpretation of certain terms, said Ahmad, who did not elaborate.

The ICC is an independent, permanent criminal court in The Hague that tries persons accused of genocide, crimes against humanity and war crimes.

The statute was adopted in 1998, and the ICC came into being in 2002.

So far, 105 countries have become signatories to the statute. Although the US signed it in 2000, it has since refused to become a party to the treaty.