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JAKARTA, July 2 (Reuters) Nearly 150 hot spots have appeared on Indonesia's Sumatra island over the past three days, signalling the start of the annual dry-season forest fires, a Forestry Ministry official said today.

The figure is way below the thousands of hot spots recorded at this point in 2006, which contributed to the spread of haze across most of Southeast Asia, Israr Albar, the forest fires surveillance unit head, told Reuters.

In the past, Indonesia's neighbours have grown increasingly frustrated by the annual fires, most of which are deliberately lit by farmers or by timber and palm oil plantation companies to clear land for cultivation.

Smoke from the fires affected much of Southeast Asia for months in 2006, an unpleasant reminder of the choking smog that hit the region in 1997-98.

''We detected an increasing number of hot spots at the end of June and the first day of July,'' Albar said. ''Northern Sumatra is particularly a concern because the number shot from 9 to 39 spots in only 24 hours.'' Acording to a surveillance unit report based on recent satellite images, Sumatra's Riau province, just south of the Malaysian peninsula, had the highest number with nearly 100 hot spots in the last week of June.

An Indonesian weather agency official said fewer forest fires were expected this year because the dry season was unlikely to be extreme and most parts of Indonesia would experience occasional heavy rainfall.

''Looking at June's data there are no indications of the kind of extreme dry-season weather that allows for widespread forest burning,'' said the agency's climate head, Endro Santoso.

''This year we are likely to see a wet dry season.'' At a meeting of Southeast Asian environment ministers on Sumatra last month, Indonesia pledged to reduce the number of forest fires by half, spending 700 billion rupiah (77.5 million dollars) this year on its efforts.

A recent report sponsored by the World Bank and Britain's development arm said Indonesia was among the world's top three greenhouse gas emitters because of deforestation, peatland degradation and forest fires.

Forest and land fires account for 57 percent of Indonesia's non-industrial greenhouse gas emissions, the report said.

Indonesia has lost 72 percent of its intact ancient forests, and half of what remains is threatened by logging, forest fires and clearances for palm oil plantations, Greenpeace said.

According to Greenpeace, Indonesia had the fastest pace of deforestation in the world between 2000 and 2005, with an area of forest equivalent to 300 soccer pitches destroyed every hour.

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