Newsgroups: bit.listserv.seasia-l
Date:         Fri, 22 Jan 1993 11:58:10 -0500
From:         Nhan Tran <tran@PEORA.SDC.CCUR.COM>
Subject:      CAM: Rebel group's timer trade with Thailand

01/18

 CAMBODIAN REBEL GROUP'S TIMBER TRADE WITH THAILAND ...

BANGKOK (JAN. 18) IPS - Thailand has reluctantly sealed its borders with
Cambodia to comply with United Nations sanctions on the Khmer Rouge. But few
think that has stopped the guerrilla group's immensely profitable trade in logs
and gems.
   Critics say Thai authorities are playing word games. Under Bangkok's ban,
only trade in "raw logs" not "processed wood" are prohibited.
   "We may be able to get processed wood out of Cambodia," says deputy
permanent secretary for the interior Chaiwat Hutachareon.
   U.N. officials fear such a policy will allow loggers to simply saw up the
trees inside Cambodia and then export the lumber to Thailand.
   They say crude wood-processing sawmills are already being set up inside
Cambodia near the Thai border. Merely peeling off a log's bark may be enough to
classify it as "processed wood".
   Senior Thai officials show little enthusiasm for the U.N. ban. They say
sanctions will not force the Khmer Rouge to comply with the 1991 Paris peace
accords which require the four rival Cambodian factions to disarm in
preparation for U.N.-supervised elections in May.
   "We believe that there is no direct link between the Khmer Rouge's material
gains through trade with Thailand and its continued intransigence," says Thai
Foreign Minister Prasong Soonsiri.
   Those "material gains" are huge, according to a recent report of the Thai
National Intelligence Agency (NIA), which was quoted in the "Far Eastern
Economic Review."
   The NIA estimated the guerrilla group has so far earned over $100 million in
its business dealings with Thai companies.
   Monthly revenues amount to about $8 million, four times the sum that the
Khmer Rouge spends for supplying its roughly 20,000 troops with ammunition,
rations and uniforms, said the NIA report.
   The guerrilla group is also paid in kind -- vehicles, telecommunications
equipment, portable electricity generators and anti-malaria medicine.
   The bulk of the Khmer Rouge's money grows on trees. The group has granted
some 16 Thai firms logging concessions in the virgin rainforests of western
Cambodia.
   Under these contracts, most of which were awarded last year, the logging
firms are allowed to cut 15 million cubic meters of logs. This could raise the
Khmer Rouge's monthly timber revenues to nearly $30 million a month, said the
NIA report.
   Among the concession-holders is the state-owned Forest Industry Organization
(FIB) which has signed up for a 60-square mile concession located about 15
miles inside Cambodia opposite Thailand's Prachinburi province, the report
said.
   Under its four-year contract, the FIB is allowed to extract one million
cubic meters of timber in exchange for royalty payments that will add up to
roughly $100 million.
   The other Cambodian factions are in the same business. The faction loyal to
Prince Norodom Sihanouk has awarded four logging concessions and the faction
led by former prime minister Son Sann has granted two.
   The Hun Sen government has also awarded logging concessions to Japanese,
Taiwanese and Thai companies.
   Thai loggers have made considerable investments to exploit these
concessions.  They have built a network of new logging roads reaching deep into
the forest lands in Cambodia.
   The cross-border timber trade is important for Thailand which imposed a
logging ban in 1989 to avert further destruction of its badly-depleted forests.
   But this is proving costly for Cambodia's forests. According to a 1992 study
by the U.N. Development Program (UNDP), Cambodia has one of the world's highest
per capita deforestation rates.
   About seven million hectares of the country's total land area of 18 million
hectares are still covered by forests. But in five years, the best forests will
be gone, the UNDP warned.
   The widespread forest destruction is endangering the productivity of
agriculture and fisheries, the UNDP said. It urged that controls be placed on
the export of timber and forest products.
   But forest protection does not seem to be in the agenda of any of the
Cambodian factions which have all become increasingly dependent on revenues
from the logging trade to finance their respective fighting forces.
   An outbreak of new fighting, should the peace process collapse is likely to
lead to even more felling of logs as the factions whittle the rainforests into
weapons of war.
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