Prime Minister Abdullah Ahmad Badawi said during a visit to the United States that the facility, sited at the high-tech hub of Cyberjaya outside Kuala Lumpur, would be funded and supported by governments and the private sector.

The New Straits Times said the centre would be modelled on the Centre for Disease Control in Atlanta, which helps handle outbreaks of disease around the world.

Abdullah — who announced the initiative at the close of the World Congress on Information Technology in Austin, Texas — said the threat of cyber-terrorism was too serious for governments to ignore.

"The potential to wreak havoc and cause disruption to people, governments and global systems has increased as the world becomes more globalised," he said according to the daily.

"The economic loss caused by a cyber attack can be truly severe, for example, a nationwide blackout, collapse of trading systems or the crippling of a central bank’s cheque clearing system," he said.

"It is imperative that countries throughout the world work in concert to wipe out this danger."

Abdullah said that big names including Symantec Corp. of the United States, Japan’s Micro and Russia’s Kaspersky Lab had agreed to take part in the "International Multilateral Partnership Against Cyber-Terrorism" (IMPACT).

In another boost for the Southeast Asian nation, which has gone to great lengths to develop its information-technology sector, computer giant Dell Inc. said it would set up a technology and development centre in Cyberjaya.

The facility will employ up to 1 000 people over the next few years, and its activities will cover process design and software development, the New Straits Times said.

Dell, which first began manufacturing personal computers in the northern IT hub of Penang in 1995, currently employs 4 000 people in Malaysia.