Indonesia is prepared to handle more forest fires this year and will receive foreign assistance only on advice, said Forestry Minister Malam Sambat Kaban.

"The government is more prepared because we are coordinating with all related stakeholders," Kaban told Antara news agency in Batam, Riau Islands on Sunday.

The minister said he was concerned foreign aid could disturb the country's sovereignty so the government would carefully examine every offer of overseas assistance or cooperation.

A series of fire prevention workshops have since May been held in Jambi, South Sumatra, South Kalimantan and West Kalimantan.

The workshops involved participants from the ministries of forestry and agriculture, the office of coordinating minister for people's welfare, the state ministry of environment, forestry and agricultural businesspeople as well as local administrations and communities.

Kaban said forest fires had brought air pollution to neighboring countries but Indonesia should not be fully blamed.

"Not just Indonesia experiences forestry fires, the U.S. also experiences (them)," said Kaban.

Forest fires in Indonesia were a natural phenomenon and directly related to the country's lengthy dry season, he said.

Last year, Singapore Prime Minister Lee Hsien Loong wrote a letter to President Susilo Bambang Yudhoyono expressing his disappointment over smog from land-clearing fires in Indonesia because the smog had blanketed parts of Southeast Asia.

But Kaban said about 60 percent of the fires were located in peatlands, which were high-risk fire zones during the dry season.

It was reported the Singapore government had proposed a master plan to help the Indonesian government to handle forest fires.

According to Singapore's Minister of the Environment and Water Resources Yaacob Ibrahim, the proposal would include a strategy to assist Jambi, a province in Sumatra, in the prevention of fire disasters.

But Kaban said he had not received the proposal.

This year the government would allocate up to Rp 144 billion (US$15.8 million) to deal with forest fires and smog and to alleviate condemnation from neighboring countries.

The government said last week governors and regents would be prepared to deal with the disasters and would aim to reach a target of "zero hot spots".

"We now have less than 100 hot spots across Kalimantan, South Sulawesi, Riau, Jambi and North Sumatra," Kaban said.

"Last year, there were thousands."

The ASEAN Specialized Meteorological Service in Singapore said between June and August last year, 52,599 hot spots affected 8,500 ha of forest land across Indonesia.

And forest-fire haze from Indonesia last year affected millions of people in Malaysia, Singapore, Brunei, parts of Thailand and the Philippines.

_{©The Jakarta Post}