KUALA LUMPUR - Two letters - A and L - in the new Malaysian "Machine Readable Passports" (MRP) are creating confusion for Malaysian Indians at immigration counters at international airports, especially in western countries.

The two adjoined letters printed in between their names and their father's names in the passport are supposed to represent "anak lelaki" (son of).

However, many immigration officials at the airports have mistaken them as part of the Malaysian travellers' names.

What is more confusing is when the immigration officials mistakenly identify them as travellers from Arab countries.

The word "Al", which means "the", is commonly used in Arab names. For example, the name Al-Rahman means "The Mearciful".

A Malaysian Indian, who wished to be identified only as Dass, told Bernama that he had an unpleasant encounter at the airport in Los Angeles recently when the immigration officer started "grilling" him on his country of origin despite him having a Malaysian passport.

"I guess he would have thought that I was from a West Asian or Arab country, maybe from Iraq, and was using a forged passport," he joked.

Arabs have mostly been associated by many westerners with terrorism, no thanks to the many western action movies which have depicted them as terrorists and international kidnappers.

Another Malaysian passport holder of Indian origin said he had a similar experience at the Chennai airport in Tamil Nadu, India, recently.

"The immigration officer asked me in Tamil why I inserted the word AL in my name," he said.

An aide to a top government official also encountered a similar experience while accompanying his boss to the US recently.

An immigration official, when contacted here, said the department was not aware of the matter.

However, he said, the "back slash" or oblique sign which was supposed to be placed in between the letters A and L in the passport as in the case of the Malaysian identity card or driving licence, could not be inserted as "it is not recognised or accepted by the computer at immigration counters worldwide".

Dass proposed that the Immigration Department do away with the two letters or print the word "first name" or "given name" and "family name" or "surname" in the passport.

While admitting that it might not be suitable for Malay or Chinese names, Dass hoped that the department would "do something about it".

Malaysian Indian holders of the non-MRP or old passports have not encountered such problems.

A total of 1,784,409 MRPs have been issued from March 23 1998 to February this year.