Dar es Salaam - The Zanzibar parliament plans to outlaw homosexual sex, mandating prison sentences of up to five years for offenders, a senior official in the semi-autonomous Indian Ocean archipelago said on Sunday.

The Zanzibar government decided to make homosexual sex illegal because officials were concerned about the increasing exposure of many Zanzibar citizens to Western culture, which "condones such behaviour", said Adam Mwakanjuki, Zanzibar's constitutional affairs minister.

"Our society is Muslim and we cannot accept" homosexuality, he said.

A draft bill outlawing homosexual sex will be presented to the archipelago's parliament on March 30, Mwakanjuki said. The bill makes it illegal for men and women to be intimate with members of the same sex and mandates prison terms of up to five years for those caught, he said. - Sapa-AP