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Trees for guns

political and military leaders from Cambodia and Vietnam are involved in large-scale illegal logging, according to an environmental group in Britain. If the government policies are not changed, Cambodia's forests will be logged out in three to five years, the group notes.

Members of the environmental group Global Witness, say that they had seen large stockpiles of illegally exported Cambodian logs in Vietnam worth nearly us $130 million. The group has called upon Vietnam to halt timber imports from Cambodia. Last year, the International Monetary Fund suspended loans to Cambodia partly because of wasteful logging practices.

The trade is illegal, the logging is highly destructive and wasteful. None of the money will go to the Cambodian treasury and most dangerously it will fund the military and political parties, predominately the Cambodian People's Party, in the lead-up to the election, say members of the organisation. Military from all sides of Cambodia, including government forces are logging the country's dwindling forests.

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