Speaking on the sidelines of an annual meeting of the Attorney-General's Chambers of Brunei, Malaysia and Singapore, the fourth such event which brought the respective legal officers closer together, Mr Shanmugam said: "One of the aims is to continue the relationship and deepen it.

'We are also discussing how our three legal systems can interact closer, and that is an issue we hope the conference will take up and look at carefully.'

The 2� -day event, hosted by Singapore's AG Chambers and held at the Rasa Sentosa Resort, is being attended by some 130 legal officers from the three countries.

Also attending are Brunei's AG Dato Seri Paduka Haji Kifrawi, Malaysia's AG Tan Sri Abdul Gani Patail and Singapore's AG Professor Walter Woon.

Topics on the agenda include the liberalisation of legal services, human organ donation, and the challenges posed by new media.

Earlier in his keynote address, Mr Shanmugam suggested the meeting look further into the 'progressive liberalisation' of the legal service sectors in the three countries, noting that Brunei's law officers put up a proposal last year towards such a direction at 12th Asean Senior Law Officials Meeting.

The Minister said that as legal frontiers expanded when countries become more inter-connected, it made sense to cooperate to cope with the challenges.

The proliferation of new media, he said, posed new challenges as criminal syndicates, for example, can use the Internet to operate in countries without having to step foot on them.

'To deal with these challenges, we cannot afford to look only within our geographic or jurisdictional boundaries. We need to establish a commonality of legal concepts, and more importantly, structures for cooperation and a strengthening of relationships between our law enforcement agencies,' said Mr Shanmugam.

'Only then will we be able to effectively regulate what our children see and read on the Internet and also combat criminal syndicates seeking refuge in other countries.'