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.