SINGAPORE, June 4: US Defence Secretary Donald Rumsfeld said on Friday he hoped US forces would be hunting terrorists in Southeast Asia "pretty soon", warning that Muslim extremists were targeting moderate Muslim states the world over.

Mr Rumsfeld made the remarks as he visited marines and sailors aboard the helicopter carrier USS Essex against a backdrop of oil tankers and freighters that ply the Strait of Malacca, gateway for a third of the world's trade.

"When are we going to start hunting some terrorists in this theatre?" a marine asked Mr Rumsfeld. "Well, I would hope pretty soon," the secretary replied.

"We simply cannot wait for another attack and expect to defend against it. We have to go out and find those terrorist networks and the people financing them, and countries providing a safe haven for them.

"It is a tough thing to do." About half the world's oil supplies move through the narrow channel on the way to markets in Japan, China and South Korea, making it a tempting target for Islamic militants seeking to destabilize the industrialized world.

But a US-sponsored initiative to improve maritime security in the Strait of Malacca has run into opposition from Malaysia, which sees the use of US forces to patrol those waters as a threat to its sovereignty.

"The entry of the United States is still open for Singapore but for Malaysia, we don't agree to the entry of a third nation," Malaysian Defence Minister Najib Razak was quoted as saying on Friday by his nation's official Bernama news agency.

The Malacca Strait, a long and narrow channel straddled by Malaysia, Singapore and Indonesia, is infested with pirates and regarded as very vulnerable to terrorist attacks.

Mr Rumsfeld later told journalists the maritime security initiative was "an idea in its early stages" that is the subject of consultations with countries in the region, and stressed it would not affect any nations' sovereignty.

"Any implication that it would impinge in any way on the territorial waters of some countries would be inaccurate," he said. Controversy initially arose in April when the commander of US forces in the Pacific, Admiral Thomas Fargo, suggested one option was putting marines and special operations forces aboard high speed vessels in the strait.

Admiral Walter Doran of the US Pacific Command repeated in Singapore on Friday US assertions that Admiral Fargo had been misunderstood, and he insisted there were no plans for bases or standing forces to patrol the Strait of Malacca.

"The primary event is to just raise the situational awareness of what is happening in the waters around us," he told reporters. "And right now we don't have a very good perception of what is going on in the water around us.

Aboard the Essex on Friday morning, Mr Rumsfeld emphasized intelligence sharing as crucial to defeating the maritime threat. "I think the fact that there's not a lot of publicity about what's happening out here may be kind of misleading," he said.

"Because there is pressure being put on terrorists in this part of the world every day by the close cooperation we have, for example with our wonderful friends here in Singapore."

Mr Rumsfeld also said Muslim radicals were bent on undermining moderate Islamic states. "A small minority are attempting to hijack that religion away from the overwhelming majority of moderate Muslims and in the process drive the West and progress out of those countries and out of their lives," he said. "They are not going to succeed."

At another point Mr Rumsfeld said: "They hope and they are making efforts to destabilize the moderate Muslim countries everywhere across the globe." Mr Rumsfeld, who arrived here on Thursday for only his second visit to east Asia as defense secretary, is scheduled to address an international security conference here on Saturday.

He is also due to meet counterparts from countries around the region, including South Korea, Japan and Australia, on the sidelines of the Asia Security Conference, which began on Friday. -AFP