Jakarta – Indonesia's forestry minister Tuesday promised a clampdown on illegal logging, which he called a "crime organized by many parties."

Muhammad Prakosa said World Bank reports indicated that forests on Sumatra island will vanish in 2005 if the government ignores or fails to slow down "the intensity of illegal logging." The minister also warned that tropical forests on Borneo island would disappear by 2010.

Prakosa, speaking at a press briefing after a ministerial meeting on security and forestry issues, said the government "pays very serious attention" to illegal logging. He cited recent police success in stopping eight ships – three of which were China-based – from smuggling stolen timber out of Jakarta's Tanjung Priok port.

Local officials have said that Indonesia's myriad economic problems, the lack of efficient security forces to impose order and the strong international demand for tropical hardwood mean combatting illegal logging is an uphill struggle.

Indonesia, home to some 10 percent of the world's remaining tropical forest cover, saw years of "rapacious deforestation" under former dictator Suharto, according to a report released earlier this year by the London-based Environmental Investigation Agency.

The World Bank has said Indonesian forests were reduced by an annual average of some 1.5 million hectares between 1985 and 1997. By December 1999, Indonesia had only some 20 million hectares of forests left.

The use of fire to clear Indonesian woodland for plantations has in addition contributed to a choking haze that has blanketed parts of Southeast Asia annually in recent years.