Cambodia logging project critizied

Cambodia logging project critizied

PHNOM PENH (Agencies): Cambodia's most prominent opposition figure, former finance minister Sam Rainsy, has joined King Norodom Sihanouk in vehemently protesting the government's award of a massive logging contract to an Indonesian timber company.

The government signed a 50-year contract with the Panin Group to log more than 1.4 million hectares (3.5 million acres) throughout the northeastern province of Rattankkiri, and parts of the northeast provinces of Mondulkiri and Stung Treng, officials said earlier this week.

The contract, signed in mid-September, covers about 15 percent of Cambodia's remaining forest land and Sam Rainsy noted that the contract appears to contravene a ban on the felling of new timber and export of logs imposed by the government earlier this year.

In addition, the former minister who was expelled from parliament in June, lamented the fact that the deal, like an earlier agreement for 800,000 hectares (1.9 million acres) of forest signed with the Malaysian firm Samling, was negotiated in private.

"I am greatly disappointed that the government should sign yet another, even larger contract with serious, long-term implications for Cambodia's environment, without fulfilling those two basic conditions," Sam Rainsy said in a statement from Osaka, Japan, where he is now visiting.