Indonesia will hold further talks with Malaysia in the coming week about the hundreds of forest fires which have created a choking haze over Malaysia, the republic's Forestry Minister Malam Sambat Kaban said.

Haze from more than 1,000 forest fires and land-clearing blazes on the Indonesian island of Sumatra has blanketed parts of neighbouring Malaysia for the past week.

The meeting between Kaban and Malaysian Environment Minister Adenan Satem would be held on this coming Thursday or Friday and follows crisis talks between them last Thursday in Medan in North Sumatra.

Kaban said they would discuss "further measures" needed to stop blazes lit to clear land and forest fires on Sumatra and Kalimantan, the Indonesian part of the island of Borneo.

"We are cooperating with Malaysia to tackle this problem and in order to minimize the haze, Indonesia is prepared to carry out cloud-seeding to induce rain," Kaban told AFP.

Last week a state of emergency was declared in two towns on Malaysia's coast, including the shipping centre of Port Klang, where operations were halted temporarily as the haze soared to extremely hazardous levels.

The state of emergency was lifted Saturday, but while the air cleared in Port Klang and the capital Kuala Lumpur, the shifting winds sent the smoke north, triggering warnings to tourists on the resort island of Penang.

Cloud seeding

Indonesia is to deploy at least three air force Hercules planes for the cloud-seeding - dropping chemicals on clouds to produce rain - in an attempt to extinguish some 1,200 fires in the provinces of Riau, North Sumatra and West Kalimantan.

"We will focus on West Kalimantan province since it has the most number of hotspots but we are also focusing on Riau and North Sumatra provinces," he said.

Haze covered parts of North Sumatra's main town of Medan on Sunday, prompting complaints of eye irritations among residents and visibility problems around the airport, an official with the meteorology office told AFP.

So far one flight had been delayed but other night flights could be cancelled should visibility worsen, said Berto, a control tower official at Medan's Polonia airport.

Indonesian officials said hundreds of rangers had been deployed but were being hampered by the remote locations of the fires and a lack of water.

Meteorological officials have said the haze could linger until October, when winds from the dry southwest monsoon, which blow from Sumatra island, finally shift.

In 1997 and 1998, choking haze caused mainly by Indonesian forest fires enveloped parts of Southeast Asia, including Malaysia, for months.