Several foreign terror organisations have a presence in Malaysia but the government has no plan to ban them, said Prime Minister Abdullah Ahmad Badawi.

"Terror organisations banned by the United Nations and whose presence are detected in Malaysia are al-Qaeda, Hamas, Hizbollah and the Liberation Tigers of Tamil Eelam (LTTE).

"So far, the government has never issued any statement to ban these terror organisations," he said in a parliamentary written reply to M Kula Segaran (DAP-Ipoh Barat) yesterday.

The premier also said they were being closely monitored to ensure that their members do not penetrate the country.

"So far there is no indication that these groups are trying to operate directly in Malaysia or plan to launch any attack," said Abdullah who is also the internal security minister.

Al-Qaeda has been blamed for a series of attacks in Southeast Asia while the LTTE is a separatist group seeking an independent state in areas in Sri Lanka inhabited by ethnic Tamils.

Hamas is known as the Islamic resistant movement in Palestine while the Hizbollah is believed to be the group fueling Palestinian terrorism in a bid to thwart Israeli-Palestinian peace negotiations.

Malaysia is holding more than 90 alleged Muslim militants under the Internal Security Act, which allows for indefinite detention without trial.

Many of them are suspected members of the Malaysian Mujahidin Group (KMM) and the Jemaah Islamiah (JI), which have been blamed for a string of attacks in Asia and are believed by authorities to have links with the Al-Qaeda.

In 2002, then deputy home minister Chor Chee Heung told Parliament that Malaysia has two groups of extremists - religious and racial - and that only members of the KMM had been arrested for religious extremism at the time.