Dr Rais said the piracy menace in the area was under the United Nations' Convention on the Law of the Sea but admitted the convention had 'more bark than bite', the New Straits Times quoted him as saying.

The tankers belonging to shipping giant MISC Berhad were hijacked in the notorious Gulf of Aden and remain in the hands of pirates.

The MT Bunga Melati 5 with 41 crew - 36 Malaysians, 5 Filipino - was seized on Friday off the coast of Yemen, fully laden with 30,000 metric tonnes of petrochemicals.

Ten days earlier, a palm oil tanker, the Bunga Melati Dua, with 39 crew on board was hijacked off the coast of Somalia.

The MISC has reported one death so far - a Filipino crew member - who died in an 'accident' during the first hijack.

Dr Rais said the foreign ministry was gathering intelligence through diplomatic channels in Somalia and Yemen.

'We found out that the pirates have no interest in dealing with the country, but will deal with the shipowners, which is MISC,' he said.

A Malaysian man on board the first hijacked tanker had reportedly made a phone call to his fiancee last Tuesday, claiming that pirates were demanding a ransom of 10 million ringgit (S$4.27 million) from MISC.

'His voice sounded different when he told me the pirates asked for 10 million ringgit to release him and other crew members. He sounded nervous,' said Nor Hasliza Mat Zin, according to the newspaper.

The Bunga Melati 5 was the eighth ship to be hijacked since July 20 in the Gulf of Aden, which lies in the Arabian Sea between Yemen on the south coast of the Arabian Peninsula and the north coast of Somalia.

The waters off Somalia are the most pirate-infested in the world, with the IMB reporting 24 attacks between April and June this year. -- AFP