Malaysia has protested new travel restrictions imposed by the United States and Canada which it says link the country with terrorists.

In the past week Deputy Prime Minister Abdullah Ahmad Badawi has revealed that Washington has placed Malaysia on a list of states considered to be high risk, and Canada has slapped visa restrictions on citizens of the multicultural Southeast Asian nation.

The new rulings have angered Malaysians, whose government has supported the US-led war on terror and who fear the moves could prompt other countries to follow suit and hurt foreign investment just as the economy begins to strengthen.

Branded as a terrorist state

Abdullah, who will take over from Prime Minister Mahathir Mohamad in October 2003, raised the issue with US Vice President Dick Cheney during a recent visit to Washington.

"I stressed in my meeting with Cheney that we don't like this profiling," he said. "We don't like to be branded as a terrorist state or as people with links with terrorists."

And Foreign Minister Syed Hamid Albar has protested Canada's new visa ruling, warning that it could hurt Ottawa's ties with its top trading partner in Southeast Asia.

He expressed regret that the ruling, which was also imposed on Saudi Arabia early this month, appeared to be targeted at Islamic countries.

"This is not good for the existing bilateral relations and it will affect efforts to increase two-way trade and investment," Syed Hamid said.

'Vulnerable to abuse'

The Canadian government said the visa restriction was introduced because the Malaysian passport system was "vulnerable to abuse" and denied that it had anything to do with the fact that Malaysia was an Islamic country.

But Lim Kit Siang, chairman of the Chinese-based opposition Democratic Action Party, said the moves by the US and Canada "cast a dark cloud" over Malaysia's international reputation.

He said Internet website WorldNetDaily last week carried a four-page US Justice Department memorandum by the Immigration and Naturalisation Service which stated that Malaysia had been included in an expanded list of 15 "terrorist-risk" countries.

Malaysia was lumped along with Iran, Iraq, North Korea, Libya, Sudan, Syria, Saudi Arabia, Cuba, Afghanistan, Yemen, Egypt, Somalia, Indonesia and Pakistan.

"It is a clear international public branding that Malaysia is a terrorist state and fortifies the misconception that there are active terrorist networks in the country," Lim told AFP.

"People are going to look askance at Malaysians when we travel and it will be detrimental to our efforts to woo foreign investment."

Came under spotlight

Malaysia, a moderate Islamic country with large Buddhist, Christian and Hindu minorities, has jailed 62 alleged Islamic extremists over the past year and won praise from the US for its support of the war on terror.

But it also came under the spotlight following US intelligence reports that members of Osama bin Laden's al-Qaeda network, including two men who were later involved in the Sept 11 hijackings, met in the capital, Kuala Lumpur, early in 2000.

The US embassy in Malaysia closed on the eve of the first anniversary of the Sept 11 terror attacks after receiving a "credible and specific threat". It has since reopened but a section of the road leading to the embassy entrance remains sealed off.

The US has also delayed issuing visas for Malaysian students, which Mahathir said was the price the country had to pay for being Islamic. The US said the delays were to ensure that applicants "do not pose a security threat".

Deputy Education Minister Abdul Aziz Shamsuddin said yesterday that the government had not decided whether to stop sending students to the US but that students had the option to study elsewhere.