Climate change and its impact on aid operations is one of the key issues former United Nation's chief Kofi Annan will focus on with his new Geneva-based humanitarian agency.

Annan today said the Global Humanitarian Forum, an international agency jointly set up with the Swiss foreign minister, will bring together major humanitarian players once a year to discuss issues and conduct studies.

"One of the areas we would want to focus on initially is the impact of the environment on natural disasters," Annan told reporters during his two-day visit to Malaysia.

The former UN secretary-general said the agency hopes to involve the military in its annual forum to strengthen future cooperation.

"Recently, we and these NGOs (non-governmental organisations) that have been involved in humanitarian relief could not have done our work without the military. We needed their logistical capabilities," Annan said.

"And I could see that in the future we may need to cooperate with them and we need to understand each other better."

Apart from the Global Humanitarian Forum, he is also chairman of the Alliance for a Green Revolution in Africa, a 150-million-dollar initiative to reverse the decline in the continent's farming sector.

Annan stepped down as UN head at the end of 2006.